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THE MATURITY OF 
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 




The Poet in the Peime of Life 



THE MATURITY OF 
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



Fortune's way with the Poet in the 
Prime of Life and After 



By, 
MARCUS DICKEY 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS PAINTED 
UNDER THE POET'S DIRECTION 

B}f WILL VAWTER 

AND REPRODUCTIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS. 
MANUSCRIPTS AND RARE DOCUMENTS 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



FOREWORD 

The author's first volume — The Youth of James 
Whitcomb Riley — according to friendly reviewers, has 
more than biographic value. 'It is almost the story 
of the youth of Indiana/' wrote a generous critic, "or 
the story of our great Middle West. Impelled by in- 
herent individualism, the central figure rises from 
primitive beginnings, and, catching at apparently 
trivial, haphazard and often serio-comic opportunities, 
lifts itself in obedience to some secret spring of power 
within, and emerging at last into a gracious maturity, 
presents the spectacle of a strong, admirable personal- 
ity, well worth the careful study and whole-hearted 
approval of a critical world." 

This reviewer fittingly termed the story "Eiley the 
Boy." And so this story of the poet's maturity may 
be termed Riley the Man, and as such is offered to a 
friendly public with the enduring gratitude of 

The Author. 

Heart of the Highlands 
Nashville, Indiana, 
June, 1922. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I Early Ventures on the Platform . 1 

II Distinction on Weekly Papers . . 23 

III The Fortune of Friendship .... 41 

IV With the Indianapolis Journal . . 56 
V Success on the Platform .... 77 

VI Literary Dens 100 

VII Waiting for the Morning .... 118 

VIII Story of His Pen Names 141 

IX His First Book 157 

X On the Platform in the 'Eighties . 172 

XI On the Banks of Deer Creek . . . 201 

XII The Silver Lining 215 

XIII The Unique Combination .... 234 

XIV The Beauty of Forgiveness . . . 257 
XV The Poet at Forty 273 

XVI Anchorage in Lockerbie Street . . 286 

XVII Poems Here at Home 300 

XVIII The Unfailing Mystery 314 

XIX Building Books 337 

XX A Patriotic Civilian 353 

XXI Last Days on the Platform . . . 369 

XXII In the Hearts of the People . . . 389 

Index , . 415 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— Cowiwttec? 

On the Banks of Deer Creek, Beloved 
Scenery Which Inspired Knee-Deep in 
June AND Other Poems .... Facing page 206 

Old Settlers' Meeting at Oaklandon, Ma- 
rion County, Indiana — 1878 ..." " 207 

The Poet and His Devoted Friend, Joel 

Chandler Harris " "236 

From a Portrait of the Poet by His Life- 
Long Friend, T. C. Steele ..." " 237 

William P. Fishback, "Who with the 
Greatest Zest Shared with the Needi- 
est" " "262 

From Original Manuscript with Illustra- 
tion. The Poem Written on the As- 
sassination OP President Garfield . " " 263 

The Poet, His Nephew, Edmund Eitel, 
and Hamlin Garland at the Green- 
field Homestead — 1894 .... " " 290 

Home in LociCERBiE Street, 1880, the Year 

the Poet Wrote Lockerbie Street . . " " 291 

Greenfield the Morning After Lee's Sur- 
render AT Appomattox .,..." " 318 

The Old Masonic Hall, Greenfield, to 
Which the Poet Returned for a Pub- 
lic Reading in 1896 " "319 

The Poet in 1896 " "346 

At the Hancock County Fair, 1865, a 
Memory of Early Days in the Poet's 
Child- World " "347 

From a Portrait of the Poet by John S. 

Sargent " " 374 

Traveler's Rest, the Tavern on the Old 
National Road, Philadelphia, Indiana 
—1850— A Memory " "375 

From a Photograph of the Poet in His 

Latter Years— 1913 " "402 

Henry Watterson — Age Seventy-Eight — A 
Staunch Friend of the Poet for 
Thirty Years " "403 



THE MATURITY OF 
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



The Maturity of 
James Whitcomb Riley 

CHAPTER I 
EAULY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 

AS shown in The Youth of James Whitcomb 
Riley the poet had a clear vision of his mission 
as a writer of verse. In connection with that 
mission, his early days revealed another phase of his 
future, foretold his genius as a public entertainer. 

It was the third scene in the fourth act — a railroad 
station at Shrewsbury Bend. To the right is an un- 
painted shed with a broad platform around it, a door 
at the side, and a window in front. There is a clump 
of shrubs near a tree on the left. A railroad track 
crosses at the rear, and back of it in perspective is 
a view of Shrewsbury River in the moonlight. There 
is a switch with a red lantern and a coat hanging on 
it; a signal lamp and post beside it, and there are 
numerous packages on the platform when the scene 
opens. The Signal Man, whistling as he works, is 
v,^heeling a barrel toward the shed when a beautiful 
girl of nineteen steps into the moonlight and seats 
herself beside the tree. She has fled from her lover 
at Long Branch a few miles distant, and is intent 
on catching a train for New York, but there is no 



2 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

train till morning. Moved by her distress, the Signal 
Man decides to aid her, so, after storing the packages, 
conceals her in the station shed for the night. Lock- 
ing the door safely, he goes to the switch, puts on his 
coat and looks at his watch. The ''Night Express" 
from New York is due in ten minutes. He walks 
around the shed with his lantern, goes to the track 
again, looks up and down the shining rails, lights his 
pipe, and then walks off to his shanty in the village. 

Then things begin to happen: A friend of the 
young woman (a veteran of the late Civil War), puts 
in an appearance, is seized by a robber and bound 
with a rope to the railroad track — then the faint 
whistle of the locomotive and the rumble of the on- 
coming train — the frantic fright of the young woman, 
who batters down the shed door with an ax and rescues 
her friend in the glare of the headlight as the **Ex- 
press'' roars by. 

Such, inadequately outlined, is a scene from Augus- 
tin Daly's famous old play. Under the Gaslight, a pic- 
turesque drama of life and love ''in these times" — 
the times being the early 'seventies of the last century. 
The play had been booked for a one-night stand at 
White's Hall, Marion, Indiana. For a week it had 
been heralded as "the great New York sensation," 
with a railroad scene guaranteed to raise the audience 
"to the highest pitch of excitement." 

Then a calamity befell : the Signal Man of the com- 
pany was taken ill! What was to be done? Riley's 
friends, knowing his ability, suggested him to the 
manager, and he was asked to play the part. He 
consented with the understanding that he be allowed 
to portray character as he conceived it. Discovering 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 3 

that the "property" coat was not realistic, he bor- 
rowed one from a local "section man"; also a pair of 
wrinlded boots and a "run-down" hat. Riley was 
twenty-three at this time, but in the guise of the 
switchman he looked sixty. Since his dialogue was 
with the young woman only, he gave her the cue for 
reply by a simple and self-designed turn of the index 
finger, which she alone understood, thus affording him 
opportunity to introduce features not in the original 
text. His lines were brief, but as he went on im- 
provising here and there, talking naturally as an old 
man would talk, the audience listened with rapt at- 
tention, and when at last, muttering and smiling 
deliciously to himself, he trudged off the stage, the 
hall grew stormy with applause. 

Quite early in his young manhood Riley was aflame 
with the desire to be an actor, just as Louisa Alcott 
was "violently attacked" by the same mania. With 
slight change in his purpose, the desire led him on 
through struggles and failures to success as a public 
reader. When but six years old, his mimicry often 
shocked his parents, for he frequently displayed it at 
the wrong time. A year or so later his mother listened 
in amazement to his recital of the chatter of a strolling 
Bohemian, who was picking up a living on the street 
with a cage of trained canaries. 

In April, 1870, Riley made quite a hit as Charles 
Fenton in T oodles, but when, two or three years later, 
his success as Grandfather Whitehead in The Chimney 
Comer, and Troubled Tom in A Child of Waterloo, 
became the talk of the town, he began to dream of 
a wider field. A friend virrote him from the West, "a 
tragi-comic friend," said Riley, "who wore a black 



4 JAMES WHITCOMB KILEY 

frock-coat to look like Hamlet. He had the stage 
fever as I had, but he also had what I lacked — ^the 
money to reconnoiter in new fields." According to 
the friend, there were two flattering prospects. In 
the first, Riley might star in Second Comedy on an 
Omaha circuit. The second was a probable engage- 
ment at the Olympic Theater, St. Louis, at fifteen dol- 
lars a week. "I really believe,'' said Riley, "that I 
could have made good in St. Louis, but it soon turned 
out that I had the wrong pig by the ear." 

One Saturday evening the Harry Gilbert Company 
entertained a Greenfield audience, in "the very laugh- 
able farce, The Rough Diamond." The company was 
assisted by "well-known local talent," including Cap- 
tain Lee Harris and J. W. Riley. Here was Riley's 
first experience with that autocrat, the stage manager. 
"I once thought I could be an actor," was his comment 
twenty years later, "but I found they would not let 
me. For instance, traditions of the stage would never 
permit me to stand with my hands in my pockets. I 
thought there were exceptions. Whenever I saw a 
chance to do some good acting, something that would 
be natural, the autocrat would scream out, 'Here! 
that's not the way to do that! You come in at this 
entrance; you stand there; you do this way, and that 
way.' Being always in hot water at rehearsals, I 
found it impossible to be natural at the performance. 
My heart was not in it. It was all on a false basis. 
Sometimes I would talk back. *Na man ever said that 
that way/ I would retort. *It is not truthful, and it 
will not go.' 'No matter,' returned the autocrat, 'you 
do it the way I tell you. I've got to look out for the 
proper effect.' I soon saw they would not let me 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 5 

be an actor. An actor, according to the old story of 
Peg Woffington, really personates, which your mere 
man of the stage never does. A grain less may be 
good speaking, fine preaching, high ranting, and elo- 
quent reciting, but Fll he hanged if it's acting/' 

One property man's advice, however, was not for- 
gotten. "Say, Riley,'' he said at a rehearsal, "you 
have a trade, haven't you? You can make two or 
three dollars a day, I suppose." Riley told him that 
he could. "See here," said he, "why waste time in 
failure on the stage? Stick to your trade. You do 
not know it, but there are people in this company 
working for nothing. Half the time none of us get our 
pay. Take my advice and go back to your trade." 
Riley took the advice ; he quit the company ; for years 
he painted signs for a living. Nevertheless he loved 
the members of the dramatic profession. "They are 
big-hearted people, charitable and noble," said he. 

The poet's debt to the stage was noteworthy, and 
it was always gratefully remembered, but the mem- 
ories were of the days when he painted the scenery 
for the Greenfield Dramatic Club and acted after his 
own fashion. It was his interest in the stage that 
led him to think about the relation of a character to 
those who should hear that character speak. Thoughts 
should not be foreign to a character if they were to 
impress the audience. The scene and the words must 
harmonize. Soon he discovered that what an author 
writes must be in concord with the reader's knowledge 
of the facts. He gained a local reputation by reciting 
"The Vagabonds," "The Village Blacksmith," and 
other selections at "modest little gatherings" and home 
concerts, "but," to quote his own words, "very soon 



6 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

I was up a stump." He found in reading a poem or 
reciting a story from some book, that he could not do 
it well because it was not naturally written. He tried 
to mend the faulty lines but soon found that would not 
work. The difficulty suggested two questions : First, 
How can you express a thought naturally unless it is 
phrased naturally? And second. Why not write some- 
thing yourself and see whether it will take? Answer- 
ing the second question he wrote several dialect poems, 
but for some time was careful not to claim them as 
his own, under the impression that there was a preju- 
dice against home-grown poets. He avoided the sing- 
song delivery and spoke his lines as if they were 
spontaneous statements of facts. "Here is a selec- 
tion," he would say to the audience, when about to 
recite one of his own verses, "that I found in a worn- 
out newspaper,'' and "Here is another from a maga- 
zine," and so on. Whenever a poem made a hit he 
saved it, improved it, and added it to his permanent 
list — and when there were no signs of approval he 
"buried the production." He was not then vnriting 
for publication. To quote him again, he "never ex- 
pected to see in print one half of what he wrote." 
In due time he had the courage to acknowledge the 
authorship of his poems. It was the familiar experi- 
ment of Robert Burns — "trying a poem on the public 
to see if it would take." 

"How did I become a poet?" Riley smiled at his 
interviewer. "I just drifted into it through the nat- 
ural course of events. I wanted to be an actor — ^had 
a vdld craving for the stage — but that's a mighty 
rocky road to travel. The nearest thing in that line 
I could do was to give public readings. Now, there 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 7 

is plenty of good elocutionary talent, but the people 
soon tire of the regular selections. So I concluded it 
might be a taking thing to have an original program. 

*Then I took part in the blue ribbon movement," 
Riley continued; "wrote temperance poems and gave 
temperance entertainments in company with other 
speakers. One of my best was the story of a reformed 
saloonkeeper, who was bothered by the women who 
prayed in front of his house. He shut himself in and 
drank to delirium, and was finally rescued by a veiled 
lady — ^his wife in disguise — who prayed before his 
door day after day. No, I never published the poems ; 
I was not publishing in those days." 

In his *'Buzz Club Papers," 1878, Riley in the guise 
of "Mr. Bryce," set down his introductory remarks 
when reading an original poem in Greenfield — a mem- 
ory it was of the charming effect produced on the 
members of a local lodge. " 1 lay no claim to that 
immortal gift of song,' " said Mr. Bryce, " 'yet I trust 
that what I shall offer you to-night may serve at least 
the purpose for which it is designed, namely, that 
of pleasing rather as a sketch of character than as a 
work of art. Although I feel that it falls short of 
the requirements of strict imitation, it was projected 
in that spirit, and weak as it is, I must present it, 
reserving hov/ever the right to claim it as my own in 
case the model remains undiscovered.* 

"With this little whiff of pleasantry," runs the ac- 
count in the "Club Papers," "Mr. Bryce bowed his 
smiling face an instant from sight. Then lifted it 
again, grown old and wrinkled as by enchantment, and 
in a voice gro\vn husky as with age, recited with life- 
like simplicity the homely romance of Tarmer 



8 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Whipple — Bachelor/ " The poem was received with 
an outburst of genuine enthusiasm. 

Riley's dream of being an actor faded, but there 
remained the hope of success on the platform. He 
was his own master in the interpretation of his poems 
— no autocrats in his path — just dark days — ^failures 
— ^then sunlight — and triumph. 

"Dickens is giving a series of farewell readings in 
England, which attract attention beyond all prece- 
dent. People go from town to town in the vain hope 
of getting seats before they are sold." This news 
item Riley read in the Greenfield Commercial when 
he was twenty years old. It served to clinch some 
remarks by Tom Snow, the "Greenfield Socrates'' who 
had taught Riley to love Dickens. The old Shoemaker 
had dreams of a day when Riley would impersonate 
some of Dickens' characters. "You want to be an 
actor," he had said, looking up to Riley from his 
bench; "Dickens is an actor; he is as successful on 
the boards as he is between them. No greater actor 
in England ; I do not except Macready. Dickens reads 
from his own books, Macready from Shakespeare ; why 
not Riley from Dickens?" Dickens had gone to the 
theater nearly every night for three years to study 
acting. According to the Shoemaker, the novelist had 
been astoundingly successful in readings from the 
Carol, the Chimes and Pickwick — successful because 
he was a great actor. 

Riley was deeply impressed and Dickens at once 
became his platform inspiration, just as Longfellow 
became his patron saint in poetry. He began to im- 
personate rustic characters; to assume the name of 
Jones or Smith and invent a family of relatives and 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 9 

attach to them various characteristics — ^virtues and 
vices. 

The summer of 1874 marked Riley's first appear- 
ance as a sole performer. It was at Monrovia, Mor- 
gan County, Indiana, then a lively little place of four 
hundred inhabitants. '1 picked out a village far from 
home," he said, "so that if I failed nobody would hear 
of it. By the almanac I was twenty-five, but as a 
booster of entertainments, callow as celery in a tile. 
Still sticking to my trade, I was hanging round a 
paint shop in Mooresville. When business was dull I 
loafed at the photograph gallery and wrote articles 
for the Mooresville Herald, Sometimes the Herald 
was out of space; then I just loafed around the gal- 
lery. The elocution bee was buzzing in my bonnet, 
and having created a furor by reciting to a few friends 
in a parlor one night, I concluded to cut loose and try 
it alone. Nobody would know me over there in the 
cross-roads village, and I fancied that I might make 
quite a hit as The Greatest Imitator and Caricaturist 
of the Age. So I rolled up some paint brushes in long 
sheets of white paper from the Herald ofiice, borrowed 
a hat and a guitar, threw a light overcoat over my 
arm, and like Obidah, the son of Abensina, went for- 
ward to see the hills rising before me. I remember 
that my overcoat was rather shabby, but by turning it 
wrong-side out the lining gave it a tolerable appear- 
ance, as it hung on my arm. After walking a short 
distance, the hack came along, an old covered quail- 
trap that plied between the towns. I gave the driver 
forty cents and about noon he landed me safely at 
the little tavern in Monrovia." 

It was Tuesday. After dinner Riley sought out the 



10 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

trustees who promptly promised him their "meeting- 
house'' for an entertainment Wednesday evening. Re- 
turning to the tavern, he painted hand-bills and a few 
large posters with his name in big red letters at the 
top. One poster displayed the word Comedian, and 
was illustrated with a picture of a fat man holding 
his sides and laughing, presumably, at the comedian's 
witticisms. "Judging from the band of children that 
followed Riley as he tacked up his bills," said the 
Monrovian marshal many years after, "one would have 
thought he was the biggest man in town — and he was" 

It was a windy afternoon and the bill-posting had 
been disagreeable business, but Riley was happy. In 
those days it did not take much to make him happy, 
or miserable either. "In the shank of the evening" 
he was sitting in front of the tavern, feeling that he 
had earned his night's rest, when a tall, lank man 
approached him. 

''You're the fellow that's goin' to give the show?" 
he asked. 

"A literary entertainment," replied Riley. He did 
not like to have it called a show. 

"Your hand-bills stuck up round town?" asked the 
man. 

"Yes, sir — ^my posters," returned Riley. 

"Well, you can't have the church ; the trustees didn't 
know you wuz a comedian." 

This made Riley feel, he said, as if he had been 
caught stealing. He tried to make the lanky gentle- 
man understand that he wasn't going to cut "monkey- 
shines," and that he would not injure the people mor- 
ally. In vain he pleaded; no show of that sort in 
"our church" — and that settled it. 




Old Schoolhouse at Monrovia — now a Sawmill — Scene of the Poet' 
FiKST Public Reading 




^. 





The Greenfield Adelphian Club and Band Wagon — 1874 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 11 

The next place for the entertainment was the school- 
house, and this was promised for Thursday evening. 
Wednesday morning Riley distributed revised hand- 
bills. This time there were not so many *'curly-cues" 
on them, nor did he whistle and sing as he had done 
the day before. He began to feel as if the whole ven- 
ture would "fizzle." In the afternoon he was tuning 
his guitar and practising his songs, when a stranger 
knocked at his door. 

"You are the showman, are you?'' he asked. 

"Yes, sir," was the prompt answer. Riley was not 
so particular about it being called a literary entertain- 
ment as he had been the day before. 

"Well," said the man, "you'll have to pay a license 
before you can sell tickets." 

"How much is the license?" 

"Two dollars." 

Riley had but a dollar left. The admission was to 
be ten cents and feeling certain the receipts would not 
cover the expenses, Riley quickly decided to make it 
a free show. So he hurried a third time over town 
and painted on the posters — Admission Free. 

When night came the little schoolhouse was full — 
full of noise and disappointment. "It was a crowd of 
thoughtless children," to quote again the town mar- 
shal, "the ragtag and bobtail of the neighborhood, and 
a gang of rough fellows from Adams Township, who 
happened to ride to town that night." The "little 
sprinkling" of men and women who frowned on the 
disorder did not count. 

Interspersing his comic selections with such musical 
favorites as "Kathleen Mavourneen" and "Silver This* 
tie," Riley strove to gain a respectable hearing, to* 



12 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

make his audience respond, the while his own heart 
was breaking. The response to 'The Mocking Bird" 
with his own variations was a sickening jumble of 
hisses and cat-calls. The effect on him is indescribable. 
His own words give a glimpse of his agony: 'The 
groans of confusion," said he, "were blotched and 
patched with scraps of sound torn from tunes that 
demons dreamed. For the moment I thought I would 
break down, but keeping a stiff under-lip upside down, 
as a brother actor once admonished me, I stuck to it 
and finished my program with Tulling Hard against 
the Stream.' " 

As Riley sat down, the village blacksmith rose: 
"You fellows," he said abruptly, "have had your fun 
with this young man and I think youVe hurt his 
feelings. He has done his best to please you, and he 
has given us a pretty good show. I move we pass the 
hat." Dropping two hits in for good luck, he passed 
his hat through the crowd himself. This little act 
of approval touched Riley tenderly; it was a kind- 
hearted crowd after all, and he smiled — "as the sun 
smiles through the mists of morning." 

The blacksmith had his own way of referring to the 
collection. "When I tell you what was in that hat," 
he once groaned, "it makes me want to roll my over- 
alls up above my knees and kick that gang from Mon- 
rovia to Mud Creek. There was everything in it — 
beans and pebbles, nails and screws, tobacco quids, 
buttons, pieces of a door-knob and a wishbone^ — and 
money? — just forty-eight cents." 

The blacksmith also spoke of the effect on Riley. 
"There are some feelings," he said, "that just have to 
be let alone; they have to describe themselves. It 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 13 

seemed to me that Riley went to his room as if begging 
his own pardon for having been born a man instead 
of a dog. The next morning he rolled up his paint 
brushes and his guitar and leaving his overcoat as 
security for his board bill plodded his weary way 
back to Mooresville/' 

For Riley it was Black Friday. Four days before, 
the scenery had been beautiful — ^the growing corn, 
the orchards, the beech and walnut groves, and the 
old mill. Now things were dark and dreary. *1 re- 
member," said he, *'that the moaning of a dove across 
a stubble field was ineffably sad. It was like the 
yearning cry of a long-lost love. Although the sun 
was shining, the weather seemed dispiriting. It was 
noon when I came in sight of Mooresville, yet the 
church spires seemed to peer through a coming dark- 
ness." 

Monrovia saw Riley no more. "It would be fine," 
he said, when at the summit of his platform triumphs, 
"to spend a day at the little brown boarding-house 
under its duck-bill roof. I would like to see the old 
couple who kept it, fiying about to prepare the spare 
room for me and an extra place at the table. I would 
like to ask them where they hung my overcoat. But 
I can't go back to Monrovia, and besides I can't read 
Tarmer Whipple' and Tradin' Joe' any better now 
than I did then." 

"When Fate desires a great success, she sends her 
chosen one failure," some one observes. "So she sent 
failure to Sol Smith Russell," said Riley, "and Joseph 
Jefferson, and Mary Anderson. Russell gave an en- 
tertainment over in Illinois, and the boys drove him 
to the river. Jefferson when a boy came with a poor, 



14 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

little itinerant troupe to an Indiana town. The players 
could not pay the license for the opera house. So they 
called their play a concert and gave it in an empty 
pork house, little Joe singing comic songs by the light 
of a tallow candle. Mary Anderson had always seen 
the stage across the footlights. It was the most glit- 
tering, romantic place in the world. But when she 
saw it from the alley entrance, with just one dingy 
gas-jet burning in the center, the romance turned to 
blank despair, and she trudged home through the rain 
to hide herself and find relief in tears. It is all very 
well,'* Riley concluded, "for the people to laugh at 
our expense, but there are not so many comic songs 
in a pork-house entertainment as they think. No 
more Monrovia in mine!'' 

Riley returned to Greenfield, knowing all sorts of 
secrets and never telling them. Although he avoided 
reference to Monrovia, he did not forego his ambition. 
Accordingly he hung out his sign in front of his shop : 
Fancy Painter, Delineator and Caricaturist. 

In 1875, having recovered from the shock at Mon- 
rovia, the Delineator and Caricaturist was persuaded 
to tempt fortune again. This time he did not do his 
own boosting but had a manager beat the drum. Riley 
thought it should be a little tour through the "penny- 
royal circuit" of Central Indiana. The manager had 
his eye on the big towns. So, for a beginning, they 
chose Anderson, Lebanon and Crawfordsville. Riley 
opposed the "big towns" because he had nothing to 
wear. To ease his mind on that score, the manager 
went his security for a fine black suit and a high- 
crov/ned black hat. The bills were printed in a neigh- 
boring tovni to keep the details of the tour a secret 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 15 

from the home-folks. One bill, a yard long, ran as 
follows : 

RILEY 

THE 

AUTHOR, 

HUMORIST 

AND 

REGIT ATIONIST! 

Will give one of his 

NEW AND 

original 

Entertainments ! 

at 

Anderson, Saturday Evening, July 3 (1875) 

The Programme will consist of Selections, 

HUMOROUS AND PATHETIC, 

From our best writers, together with 

ORIGINAL RECITATIONS, 

character sketches and 

POPULAR BALLADS. 

This Young and Talented Artist is particularly pleas- 
ing and happy in everything he attempts, having a 
keen appreciation of the Mirthful Side of LIFE, al- 
loyed with a fine Poetic Sense. He is a True Student of 

THE GREAT MASTER— NATURE. 

His powers of Mimicry are free from all the strain of 
rant and the mock heroic. Easy, graceful, thoroughly 
at "home," he holds his throne, the rostrum and 
reigns 



16 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

SOVEREIGN OF ALL PASSIONS. 

Without the artifice of dress, or trickery of paint, he 
stands a child of five, or a tottering old man. His 
facial capabilities seem inexhaustible, enabling him to 
look the thought he speaks and mirror back to Life its 

EVERY PHASE OF CHARACTER! 

Cultured and refined, with a true conception of the 
MORAL and the GOOD, he suffers no low jest or vul- 
gar thought to desecrate his worth. 

HE HAS MET WITH THE MOST FLATTERING 

SUCCESS WHEREVER HE HAS APPEARED, the 

more especially in his ORIGINAL READINGS AND 

HUMOROUS PERSONATIONS. 

Don't Fail to See AND 

HEAR HIM 

Admission 25 Cts. 



0. H. P. MOORE, 



General 
MANAGER. 



Jeffersonian Job Print, Franklin, Ind. 

Borrowing an old rockaway for the trip, Riley and 
his manager drove across country to Anderson. The 
program for the evening was essentially the same as 
that given at Monrovia^ — recitations, and music by 
himself on the guitar. The door receipts were fifteen 
dollars, hall rent ten dollars, other expenses eight 
dollars — dead loss, three dollars. 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 17 

On Sunday there was a lack of necessary funds. The 
rockaway had been sent home. "The next day," said 
Riley, "there being a hitch between me (party of the 
first part) and my manager and my thorn in the flesh 
(party of the second part), I boarded the Accommo- 
dation, and at night crept into Greenfield with a hang- 
dog look that would have done credit to a man floun- 
dering in the swamps of Tipton County." 

Riley attributed the failure to o^er-advertising and 
itTzcZer-proficiency. "Sovereign of all Passions!" he 
groaned — when rereading his bill twenty years after 
the failure — "and that monstrous line, The Mirthful 
Side of Life, alloyed with a fine Poetic Sense, alloyed 
(debased by mixing); great God! what stupidity! 
That damned the venture. I marvel that our old rock- 
away was not shattered by a thunderbolt. 

"It is never safe," he went on, "to gloss the facts. 
You can no more deceive the people than live-stock 
boosters can trick the farmers. No, no, it will not 
work. To sail under false colors is to invite defeat. 
You can not deceive Mr. Truth. He will spot you as 
surely as Mark Twain spots a sham." 

The Anderson Democrat thought Riley's entertain- 
ment was a credit to him. It showed unmistakable 
evidence of dramatic talent and literary taste of a high 
order, which only needed to be properly cultivated 
to place him in the front rank. The Herald said the 
audience was small. Several of the recitations were 
fairly creditable; but want of training was apparent 
in every effort. The Herald commended to Mr. Riley a 
liberal use of a life-size mirror, midnight oil and the 
instruction to be had from a competent drill-master. 
"There^s millions in it." 



18 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

On recovering from his second failure, Riley took 
the Herald's admonition to heart. He remembered 
how Dickens walked about the fields, practising four 
and five hours a day, and he gave heed to his motto : 
"No Day Without a Line/' 

For two years, beginning with 1876, he had his 
way about reciting in the churches and schoolhouses 
of small towns. So doing, the hall rent would be 
nominal and the audience usually sympathetic. Oc- 
casionally there would be some hitch in the advertis- 
ing, then "the house would be dark'' and there would 
be left but one alternative — the return to Greenfield 
without funds. "More than once," was his word, "I 
dodged the tollgate and slipped into town by a cir- 
cuitous route." 

The humorous predominated in his readings. "My 
lecture on Funny Folks," he wrote his Schoolmaster 
in October, 1876, "is nearly complete." He got his 
cue from the annual forecast of talent for the lecture 
platform. The bureaus were calling for humorists. 
Petroleum V. Nasby was to tell about "Betsey Jane." 
Mark Twain was to describe "Buck Fanshaw's Fu- 
neral" and tell his whistling story. Eli Perkins was 
to lecture on the "Philosophy of Fun." The Danbury 
News Man was to read from his "Life in Danbury," 
and Josh Billings from his "Almanac." Last and not 
least, Riley's favorite, Bret Harte, was to be in the 
field with "Progress of American Humor." 

By the beginning of 1878, Riley had gained sufficient 
strength and popularity to stand alone. Committees 
usually relieved him of the cares of printing and dis- 
tributing circulars. "Come to the Court House To- 
night," invited the hand-bills for Newcastle. "Don't 



EAELY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 19 

Forget Riley — That Leedle Boy of Mine. Music by 
the Cornet Band." At Lewisville, Indiana, the Pres- 
byterian Church was crowded. "The entertainment 
was pleasing and profitable to all.'' Riley remembered 
that on this occasion the admission fee was ten cents 
and his share of the receipts four dollars. ^'Imagine 
the sensation!" said he, "four dollars for a hungry 
poet! I ran down street to a candy store and bought 
enough gingerbread to wall a well." 

At Kokomo a week later, favorable winds began to 
blow. There the Hoosier Delineator and Humorist 
won fame in a single night. Thenceforward his prom- 
inence in the lecture field was assured. The initial 
step was taken by the Humorist himself as shown in 
a letter to his friend, J. 0. Henderson : 

Greenfield, Indiana, January 24, 1878. 
Dear Henderson: 

Noticing the paragraph in to-day's Dispatch that 
anything from Juliiis Caesar to a second-class cancan 
would catch your show-going people just now, I write 
to ask what chances I would have there with Original 
and Select Readings. I shall have my program com- 
plete and ready for presentation to the public in a 
few days. I desire to answer invitations only. The 
reason of course will be obvious to you. Can you 
work up such a thing for me in Kokomo? I believe I 
can safely promise to entertain your amusement-lov- 
ing people — provided I can get enough of them to- 
gether. If you can do this for me I will not forget 
the favor. If you think an appearance there would 
not be feasible, say so, and I will seek fresh fields and 
pastures new. 

Most gratefully yours, 

J. W. Riley. 



20 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Five months before, Kokomo had been the scene of 
the explosion of that literary torpedo, the Poe-Poem 
hoax. Feeling that the poet had suffered long enough 
the community resolved to make amends and the way 
it did it was capital. The entertainment was an- 
nounced from all the church pulpits, and all church 
social gatherings were postponed. Tickets were sold 
at the Opera House, the Post Office, a drug store and 
a book store. The Dispatch guaranteed a good audi- 
ence. It announced that the poet would give a select 
reading "by special request of our leading citizens." 
The entertainment would "be one that entertained/' 
Handkerchiefs would be needed. "Let us give the 
author of *Leonainie' a rousing reception." The Trib- 
une announced the poet as "a young man of great in- 
tellectual endowments. February 14 (1878) would be 
his first appearance before a Kokomo audience." On 
Wednesday hand-bills declared that the poet "was a 
complete master of the humorous and pathetic," and 
that he could tangle these elements "till you would 
laugh at grief and weep at mirth." Thursday more 
bills were distributed: 

J. W. RILEY TO-NIGHT 

Whoever fails to hear Riley will be sick 
to-morrow, when the praises of his read- 
ings, imitations and perfect dialect sto- 
ries will be the talk of the town. 

The result was just what the Dispatch promised, a 
"good audience." Riley had agreed to read for a 
nominal sum. "Tell it not in Gath," he wrote the 
committee; "I will come for five dollars." When the 



EARLY VENTURES ON THE PLATFORM 21 

net receipts totaled seventy dollars, he felt (to use his 
own words) as if he had cracked his powers of in- 
vention. 

He was exceptionally happy in his program, due 
doubtless to care in preparation and to the inspira- 
tion of the audience. *'The Jolly Old Pedagogue" (a 
poem by the youthful George Arnold) afforded him 
an opportunity to impersonate old age, the role that 
had made him so popular in The Chimney Corner, The 
boys and girls of fifty years ago, if still living, will 
remember the sunshiny smiles on the wrinkled old 
face, and how the pedagogue chuckled and prattled — 

"I'm a pretty old man," he gently said, 
"I have lingered along while here below; 
But my heart is fresh, if my youth is fled," 
Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago. 

Riley had not yet gained sufficient courage always to 
acknowledge the authorship of his own poems. "Out 
in the provinces," he said, "I could admit I was a poet, 
but in. a population of three thousand it was different." 
At one point in the program, after reciting "The Lily 
Bud" by Anna Poe (a little rural picture in which 
the birth of a child reconciled two neighbors who had 
been chronic enemies), he disguised his authorship of 
one of his own poems as follows: "Here is a selec- 
tion," he said, taking it from his inside coat pocket, 
"which a friend of mine threw into the waste-basket. 
He disliked to acknowledge it, but I don't mind telling 
you that he was a follower of Wegg, that is, some- 
times he dropped into poetry. If you will lend me 
your ears I will read you this specimen of his versifi- 
cation" — on which he recited from memory his beau- 



22 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

tiful "Dream of Christmas/* now entitled "Das Krist 
Kindel." 

So he continued through the program, reading many 
of the poems that later in his books and on the plat- 
form brought him fame. 

This highly successful Kokomo evening marks the 
turn in the tide for Riley as a public reader. In March 
he received fifteen dollars for a "lecture" at Tipton, 
and the same, a week later, in Noblesville. Admirers 
began to write their friends about him, and the Indi- 
anapolis Journal was gratified that "the Hoosier Poet 
is getting talked about and quarreled over — a sure 
sign that there is something in the man." 

Thus, at the beginning of 1878, Riley was vastly 
encouraged "by the brightness of the track on which 
he had to throw his little shadow." 



CHAPTER II 

DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 

FOR two years, beginning in 1878, Riley was a 
regular contributor to the Kokomo Tribune and 
the Indianapolis Saturday Herald. Occasionally 
he sent verses to the Kokomo Dispatch, the Newcastle 
Mercury, the Locomotive Fireman's Magazine (Indi- 
anapolis) and the Peoria Call, while the Indianapolis 
Journal received a weekly budget. Less frequently, 
prose sketches or poems found their way to the In- 
dianapolis News and the Cincinnati Commercial, 

"The way to ascertain," said his friend Bill Nye, 
"is to find out." If newspapers were the channels for 
reaching the public, the sooner the medium was tested 
the better. So he began "going like an emery wheel, 
scintillating for five or six newspapers." Soon he 
showed signs of overwork. Friends became alarmed. 
Instead of flying to Mount Helicon, Pegasus was bear- 
ing him with all speed to the hospital. Maurice Thomp- 
son was certain "the physical frame of the Indiana 
Bums would soon wear out" and so wrote to the New 
York Independent, Another friend feared the poet 
would "attenuate into a set of quivering nerves and 
a pair of big, wild, hungry-looking eyes. Remember," 
this friend went on, "that thirty is a critical age for 
men of genius, and if you can get past that with a 
sound mind and a fair digestion you are as good as 
elected for the pantheon." 

23 



24 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Here, when Riley was nearing thirty, was an in- 
gathering of prophets whose forebodings, like the 
prophecies of others in years to follow, never came 
true. His friends had many kindly misgivings as to 
his powers of physical endurance, but with rare ex- 
ceptions, they failed to take into account his powers 
of recuperation, which truly were astounding. While 
the doleful comments were being proclaimed from the 
housetops, Riley would, quite likely,, be sitting up 
serenely in bed writing a poem. A day or so later 
he would surprise the community by walking down the 
street as if nothing serious had happened — as in real- 
ity it had not. *'He must have been born to be hung," 
was about all there was left for his friends to say. 

The newspapers of that day did not pay for poetic 
contributions, which mattered not particularly to the 
poet, except that he must have food, clothing and shel- 
ter. One editor, after publishing Riley's poems for a 
year, took his contributor to a tailor and ordered him 
a suit. "I had been wearing a coat of many colors 
and wrinkles," said Riley, "a vest with fringed pockets, 
shiny trousers, a seedy hat, and a fancy pair of shoes 
picked up from an old box marked *Out of Style.* 
When, a few days after my good fortune, I walked 
down the street in a swell cashmere suit, my native 
haunts sat up and took notice. There was much 
speculation as to how I came in to such rare posses- 
sion. I had never been accused of theft, but there 
was ground for suspicion," 

The editor of the Peoria Call, like many other peo- 
ple, had been watching the poet's career with interest 
and predicting for him great success. The Call was 
young and, while it could not pay poets, it could afford 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 25 

to pay two dollars a column for prose contributions. 
Riley's characteristic reply was as follows: 

Greenfield, Indiana, August 27, 1879. 
Dear Friend: 

Right now I am going down among my juiciest MSS. 
and copy for the Call, the very ripest, lushest and 
mellowest old sonnet of the lot, and if you like son- 
nets as I like them, why, you will suck the one I send 
you like a pawpaw. 

I appreciate your kindly offer of remuneration for 
contributions and feel honored that you really desire 
my work. I know a little something of newspapers. 
I would ask nothing for my work — only I'm abso- 
lutely compelled to — ^because I am poorer than any 
newspaper. But I am a smiler, and can hook the 
corners of my mouth as far back over my ears as any 
little man you ever saw. Tickles me when you say 
you "have a great curiosity to know something about 
me personally," and I infer from this remark, that 
you have not seen a recent 'Interview'* in the Chicago 
Tribune. That will tell you all about me — and I 
shudder as I call your attention to the fact. 
Truly and gratefully yours, 

J. W. Riley. 

Many poems contributed to the Kokomo Tribune 
became popular immediately : "A Bride," **Romancin'," 
"The Beetle," "The Passing of a Heart," "My Henry," 
"Tom Johnson's Quit," and "A Lost Love"; the last 
appearing in October, 1880, with its glimpse of mar- 
ried misery, which Sam Jones said sounded "like the 
wail of a defeated political party" : 

"He sailed not over the stormy sea. 
And he went not down in the waves — not he — 
But he is lost — for he married me — 
Good-by, my lover, good-by." 



26 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Many declared "Romancin* " the finest dialect poem 
extant. Hundreds went about their daily work repeat- 
ing "The Beetle's'' refrain: 

"O'er garden blooms 
On tides of musk, 
The beetle booms adown the glooms 
And bumps along the dusk." 

"Here comes the Tribune," wrote the poet's friend, 
Dan Paine of the Indianapolis News, in August, 1879. 
"That infernal Beetle has been booming and bumping 
about my ears all day. The poem is just crammed 
with subtle beauties. Do you know there is as much 
imagery and poetry in the work you have turned out 
this week as would suffice many a man, who breaks 
into the magazines at a round price, for half a year. 
And you are doing it for nothing." Others expressed 
similar opinions. "Why waste genius on weekly 
papers?" 

But Myron Reed's comment was different. It was 
not a waste of either time or genius; it was wise to 
remain a while longer among the country people. Riley 
found it easy to abide by his friend's counsel. Reed 
was ten years his senior. "Bums," Reed continued, 
"did not catch the characteristics and manners of the 
people living in Edinburgh until Providence had pro^ 
vided him with the knowledge of people living in the 
country. He held his ear close to the ground, and thus 
gained a more intimate knowledge of himself. To 
know himself was his constant study. He weighed 
himself alone; he balanced himself with others; he 
watched every means of information to see how much 
ground he occupied as a man — and as a poet. No, 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 27 

you are not wasting your time. The waste of time 
comes when we go to gratify our desires with the 
vanities of the city." 

In his latter days Reed insisted that "Riley was 
not always joking when he said he could write five 
poems a day. Then his poems were conceived and 
written in the fiery ecstasy of the imagination. The 
tonic of the spring was in them — and in him. His 
poems were trees, gTeen and flourishing, quite differ- 
ent from the withered, sapless ones the older poets 
were polishing for the magazines." 

Indiana slowly awoke to the realization that in Riley 
she had found an interpreter, and one can pardon her 
enthusiasm, and her humor, too, in spreading the fame 
of her favorite singer beyond her own borders. "If 
you keep on the way you are now going," wrote a 
local Maecenas, "in three years you will be known all 
over Indiana, Illinois and parts of Missouri." 

"You are copied in exchanges," another wrote, 
"from Connecticut to Colorado. To you more than 
any one else the Kokomo Tribune owes its literary 
reputation." "Don't you know," wrote Mary Hart- 
well Catherwood, "that you are spreading out more 
rapidly than any other young writer in the United 
States?" "You are going hand in hand with General 
Grant in an advertising wagon over the country," 
wrote another correspondent. "Your poem, *My 
Henry,' will travel from Maine to the Golden Gate. I 
saw it last week in the New York Tribune." 

Now and then there was a voice on the other side, 
enough to make things interesting. A protest came 
from Maurice Thompson. Dialect was not a happy 
medium for the transmission of song. "I shall be 



28 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

sorry," he wrote, "if Riley depends on his Tribune 
stuff for his name and fame." 

As interest in Riley grew, friends urged him to 
come out in book form. Burns had published his first 
book by the time he was thirty, and it had been so 
well received that new prospects had been opened to 
his poetic ambition. He had posted away to the city 
and had come under the patronage of one of the noblest 
men in Edinburgh. 

A tiny cloud rose above the horizon, according to 
Riley, in the summer of 1879, but it soon vanished. 
**Mr. J. W. Riley," ran a weekly local, "the well-known 
poet and writer, and Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood 
are engaged upon a joint literary production, which 
v/ill appear in book form." "The idea," said Riley, 
"was this : An obscure genius grows up in the jungles 
of Hoosierdom, a poet — a real poet, unhonored and 
unsung. By the merest chance he discovers a young 
woman in the East who writes verses not unlike his 
own. One of her poems particularly attracts him, and 
in a gust of admiration he writes a letter of honest 
congratulation, to which she gracefully replies. Again 
he writes asking for other specimens of her work. 
Thus begins a correspondence. Their letters are re- 
produced, together with their poems and sketches. 
Each is inspired by the other and each is eager to 
excel. The inevitable follows, the young Hoosier van- 
ishes mysteriously, and in due time brings home a 
bride from Boston — and all goes merry as a marriage 
bell. Mrs. Catherwood," Riley added, "was to write 
under the assumed name of Christine Braidly, and I 
was to answer as Thomas Whittleford. The book, 
which was to contain the poems as well as the corre- 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 29 

spondence, was to be entitled The Whittleford Letters, 
and we even went so far as to see it (in our minds) 
published to the tune of twenty thousand." 

"It was a fine air castle," said Mrs. Catherwood, 
"but neither Miss Braidly nor Mr. Whittleford could 
put the foundation under it. Both set up a high stand- 
ard of writing. There was to be no rank overgrowth 
of words — ^just the plain stalk of truth springing up 
and blooming in its own purity. But quite soon the 
letters grew *gushy.' Miss Braidly made the mistake 
of asking a poet to write poems to order. She might 
as well have asked him to extract sunbeams from sea- 
weed. She had her eccentricities too. She had mis- 
chief and daring in her, and her Creator knew it. At 
times she was tempestuous as the sea. Team-work 
with such a combination was impossible. It would 
not have been more 'lunatic' had some swain hitched 
a zebu and a bighorn to a chaise in the hope of reach- 
ing London." 

With the bursting of the Whittleford bubble, Riley 
became tranquil, and not for four years did he talk 
seriously of attempting book publication. "Don't rush 
into print," said Reed; "rush around here in Central 
Indiana towns a little while longer. Bide your time." 

In March, 1879, Riley joined the Tribune's Home 
Department, making through the year numerous prose 
contributions. He also wrote "things in lighter vein." 
A little chaff among the wheat was his recipe for a 
good home paper. Some critics thought his poems met 
the requirements in that regard, but at any rate he 
became the *' Tribune humorist." 

The Tribune believed that a newspaper might and 
should become as profitable and as acceptable a medium 



30 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

for authors as the magazines. **The state which builds 
up a literature of its own," it said editorially, "raises 
the most enduring monument in the world/' Cherish- 
ing such views, exchanges in due time regarded the 
Tribune as "one of the best home journals in the 
West." By the end of 1879 it had a host of sixty con- 
tributors, about all the writers then residing in 
Indiana. At the head of the list was the mysterious 
"John C. Walker." Most of the Riley poems, after- 
ward currently known as the Walker poems, were con- 
tributed and printed over that no7)i de plume. Natur- 
ally speculation was rife as to who was their author. 
Other contributors were as truly in the dark about it 
as were the readers. The Peoria Call gave the Tribune 
credit for "introducing the new dialect poet, John C. 
Walker, to the literary world." 

"On a single page of my scrapbook," wrote D. S. 
Alexander, afterward congressman from Buffalo, New 
York, "Riley runs the gamut of feeling. I clipped his 
sonnet, 'Babyhood,' from the Boston Advertiser, A 
dozen lines on 'Sleep' were thought good enough for 
the New York Evening Post. His poem, 'The Shower,' 
strayed away up into Canada. Without name or credit 
they were traveling like gold pieces on their intrinsic 
worth, as valuable in New England as in Indiana. 
Turning a leaf I find dialect poems attributed to John 
C. Walker. How clean they are — not an oath or sem- 
blance of vulgar witticism in one of them. Riley has 
not owned these 'Walker poems,' but if he did not 
write them — there's no use guessing.*' 

On receiving the famous letter from Longfellow, 
Riley, overjoyed, promptly wrote his friend, Ben 
Parker of the Newcastle Mercury. In the same month 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 31 

(November, 1876), the Mercury printed three Riley 
sonnets, "Dawn," "Dusk" and "Night," then entitled 
"Morning," "Evening" and "Night." In December, 
"If I Knew What Poets Know" appeared in the Mer- 
cury columns. "Our only excuse," said Parker, "for 
taking such liberty with an effusion sent only for the 
private inspection of the editor, is that it is so lovely 
we can not resist the temptation to print it." 

In June of that Centennial Year, the Mercury 
printed part of "The Silent Victors," which Riley had 
written in May, to be read at Newcastle Decoration 
Day. "Riley taught us," said Parker, recalling the 
Memorial poem, "to see our dead in the flowers that 
burst from the ground. In 1861 we saw, with tear- 
dimmed eyes, our young men march away. In 1876 the 
poet came to twine wreaths upon the stones that stood 
like sentinels at their graves. All suddenly came the 
vision — 

'While in the violet that greets the sun. 

We see perchance, the eye whose light has flown; 

And in the blushing rose, the cheek of one 
That used to touch our own.' 

Here was something new, a revelation to weeping 
mothers and sweethearts, a holy silence around, that 
they had not experienced before." 

Henceforth from 1876 the Mercury was ever a Riley 
champion. Sometimes it criticized, but always for his 
good. It gave free circulation to the "Walker poems" 
and heartily enjoyed its discovery that Riley was their 
author. 

Riley's contributions to the Indianapolis Saturday 
Herald covered the same period as those to the Kokomo 



32 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Tribune, the last, in February, 1880, being a dainty 
little valentine : 

"With a bunch of baby-roses in a vase of filigree, 
And hovering above them — ^just as cute as he could 

be--^ 
Was a fairy Cupid tangled in a scarf of poetry." 

Since the poet's contributions to the Herald were 
said by eminent critics to be his best work, it seemed 
an auspicious beginning that among his first should 
be "An Autumnal Extravaganza," another invocation 
to the Muse. The Muse dazzled his mind. She was 
an Autumn maiden filling his heart with a passion so 
intense, earthly eloquence failed to describe her. He 
wanted to kneel at her feet and worship her. "Let 
the winds," he implored, 

"Blow aside the hazy veil 
From the daylight of your face; 
Let me see the things you see 
Down the depths of Mystery!" 

"Riley's poetic fire," said George C. Harding, editor 
of the Herald, "had been smoldering under a cargo of 
depression, just flickering, gasping for fuel. When at 
last the Muse began to twang the lyre, he was electric. 
As he himself said, the flames leaped up roaringly and 
illumined the heart like a torchlight procession." 

Appearing in the Herald were such popular poems 
as "The Tree-Toad," "Tom Van Arden," "Dan Paine," 
"God Bless Us Every One," "Babyhood," "A Sleeping 
Beauty," "A Dream of Autumn," "Old-Fashioned 
Roses," "The Little Town o' Tailholt" and "Moon- 
Drowned," always lovingly enshrined in its author's 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 33 

heart. Like the poems for the Kokomo Tribune, these 
soon began a vagabond existence, finding temporary 
resting places in the corners of the world's exchanges. 

There was one, however, that the exchanges did not 
relish, Riley's first long poem, *'The Flying Islands of 
the Night." Warmly approved by many and as sav- 
agely criticized by others, its reception had a parallel 
in that given Keats' "Endymion." In writing it, Riley, 
like Keats, had plunged headlong into the sea regard- 
less of shoals and quicksands; and, like Keats again, 
Riley was greatly disappointed that it was so un- 
favorably received, although he was not so broken in 
spirit. 

"In The Flying Islands,' " said Riley, "I attempted 
to write a drama out of nothing to stand on and no 
place to stand. The ambrosia that nourished my fancy 
came from undiscovered regions in dim oceans of 
space. The poem more nearly approaches a creation 
than anything I have done — ^but I am not here to ex- 
plain it nor to tell how I wrote it. That is a mystery 
to me as it is to others." 

At a later period, writing Mr. Joseph Knight of 
England, Riley said that there was nothing left ''but 
to confess the work as simply and entirely a fabrica- 
tion of fancy — purposely and defiantly avoiding, if 
possible, any reference to any former venture or 
accomplishment of any writer, dead or living — though 
in this acknowledgment I hasten to assure you that no 
spirit of irreverence as I wrote was either in posses- 
sion of or parcel of my thought. It was all bred of an 
innocent desire to do a new thing. I argued simply in 
this wise: Some mind, sometime, invented fairies, 
and their realm. So with mermaids and their king- 



34 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

dom — and so I went on with the illimitable list till I 
found 

'The earth and the air and the sea, 
And the infinite spaces' 

all — all occupied. So, obviously, I had in my crying 
dilemma, to put up with flying islands, together with 
such inhabitants thereon, as I might hope to suggest 
if not create." 

The drama was the fourth in a series of six prose 
sketches interspersed with poems, entitled **The Re- 
spectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club," printed 
anonymously in the spring and summer of 1878, and 
copyrighted in October — not with the design of then 
making a book, but simply to protect the author's 
claims. 

Like the *Tlying Islands," the "Buzz Club" was 
constructed out of nothing. It was purely a Riley 
creation. The object of its meetings was *'to listen 
and learn and to join in a hullabaloo of delight." Its 
roster had a list of twenty-five members, but when the 
roll was called only four responded — "four literary 
enthusiasts living in the town of Greenfield, Hancock 
County." What they said at the Club meetings and the 
papers they read were duly reported and printed in 
the Saturday Herald, 

There was a Mr. Hunchley, the president of the 
Club, and a Mr. Plempton, whose contributions showed 
a faint contempt for his co-workers. And Mr. Click- 
wad, "the fantastic figure of the group," as Riley 
wrote, "an enduring surprise, an eternal enigma — 
erratic, abrupt, eruptive, and interruptive ; a com- 
batant of known rules and models, a grotesque defier 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 35 

of all critical opinion, whose startling imagination 
was seemingly at times beyond his control even had 
he cared to bridle it." 

Mr. Clickwad manifested Riley characteristics at 
all the meetings, as did also the fourth member of the 
Club, Mr. Eryce, "a sad-faced, seedy gentleman, of a 
slender architecture, and a restless air indicative of 
a highly sensitive temperament. He wore no badge 
of age save that his beardless face was freaked about 
the corners of his eyes, nose and mouth with wrinkles. 
His dress, although much worn and sadly lacking in 
length of leg and sleeve, still held a certain elegance 
that retained respect.*' 

He was introduced to the Club at its second meeting 
as follows: "Gentlemen," said the president with a 
radiant smile, **I have the honor of introducing to 
your notice a gentleman whose intrinsic talents the 
world is yet to hear from, when the plaudits of a 
nation shall infest the atmosphere. A genius and an 
artist all combined in a music box of nature and a 
masterwork of mind. A dawning star whose brilliance 
shall permeate the gloom of — of — ^histrionic history — 
and — and — but why continue in a vein of prophetic 
possibilities? Gentlemen, as I said before, I present 
to your notice and esteem the rising young actor and 
character-artist, Mr. J. Burt Bryce." 

It was said the young actor's eyelashes drooped 
demurely at the warm welcome. "Highly compli- 
mentary," rem.arked Riley years after. "The illus- 
trious actor, your little bench-leg favorite, went to bed 
that night with his boots on, and his head swelling 
like a puff fish." 

When Riley admitted that he was the author of the 



36 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"Flying Islands," friends "shed luster on his name" 
by dubbing him "Mr. Bryce of the Buzz Club," or if 
the duality of his genius was in mind, "Bryce and 
Clickwad." 

Editors were at sixes and sevens about Mr. Click- 
wad. "Who," asked one, "writes the 'Buzz Club 
Papers'? They remind one of the Pickwick Papers, 
but poor Dickens is beyond accusation. The poetry is 
excellent, some of it scarcely surpassable for freshness 
and sweetness. Our own J. W. Riley will have to 
groom his Pegasus with critical care, or he will fetch 
up a length behind. We can understand how a man 
can excel in a specialty — ^how a poet may reach dizzy 
altitude in a particular field, but the capacity to 
startle and please in any part of the poetic realm- — 
that indeed occasions surprise." 

At one of the Club meetings, Mr. Clickwad having 
prepared a little volume to read on the occasion, the 
members were asked to "accept it in its virgin form, 
bare, bald, and stark of either index, notes or glos- 
sary." Clearing his throat vehemently and turning 
abruptly to his manuscript, he read "The Flying 
Islands of the Night." Was there really a poet by the 
name of Clickwad, Herald readers were asking, and if 
so, where did he live, and what was his history? The 
public did not know. 

When the popular poem, "Her Beautiful Hands," 
appeared in the "Club Papers," friends were certain 
Riley was its author. Still he was disinclined to burst 
the bubble. He allowed the report to be circulated 
that the "Buzz Club" author had most grievously pur- 
loined one of the Hoosier Poet's priceless effusions. 
Even after it was known that Mr. Clickwad was a 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 37 

fiction, Riley added to the bewilderment by attacking 
his own productions. An instance was an unsigned 
editorial in the Herald. ** The Flying Islands of the 
Night/ " he said, "has thrown many of the small 
rhymers into a chasm of misery. They writhe and 
wail and gnash their teeth in dismay. Some are deter- 
mined they will not lie supinely while J. W. Riley, the 
poet, rides triumphantly over them with his imposing 
train of Wunks, Spirks, Crools and Wamboos. In- 
stead of admiring the originality of conception and 
the fantastic fancy its author displays in the poem, 
they condemn it because it is quite unlike anything 
they have ever read. Not one of the critics appears 
to remember that the work is given to the public 
through the medium of Mr. Clickwad, an individual of 
peculiar personality and eccentric mind and manners, 
exactly the character to give off mental emanations of 
original flavor." 

Among those whom Riley perplexed by his secrecy 
and evasion was Mr. Enos B. Reed, the editor of the 
Indianapolis People, who for some time had been set- 
ting his seal of disapproval on about everything the 
poet wrote. The People was seldom happier than 
when holding Riley up to ridicule. While Riley was 
unfavorably criticizing the "Flying Islands," the editor 
of the People was praising it ; for one reason, at least, 
because Riley was against it. It contained "some of 
the sweetest gems that ever sparkled from a soul on 
fire." When, however, the editor discovered that Riley 
was its author, the poem was branded "an ignominious 
failure," 

This was a situation that filled Riley and his Green- 
field associates with uncontrollable mirth. "We hid 



38 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

away in back lots/' said one, "and cackled like a flock 
of buff cochins." 

Comment on the *Tlying Islands" was about equally 
divided — favorable and unfavorable. *'lt is now pretty 
generally known/' said the Indianapolis Herald 
(August, 1878), "that Mr. J. W. Riley is the author 
of the *Buzz Club Papers.' Such remarkable versa- 
tility, such captivating originality, and such exquisite 
tenderness as he has shown in the construction of his 
poems are seldom found in any author. The Tlying 
Islands' will forever fly, a strange vision of beauty, in 
the minds of those who read them." 

At first Riley was startled and chagrined at the 
criticism of his long-time friend, B. S. Parker of New- 
castle. Later he read and reread it, "chewed, swal- 
lowed and digested it," he said. " *The Flying Islands 
of the Night,' " wrote Parker in the Mercury, "What 
is it? Well, we don't know. It is a waif of nothing 
on a warp of nought. It is a drama in which beings 
appear that never existed anywhere except in Riley's 
brain, and they inhabit countries the very names of 
which are foreign to anything else on the earth except 
Riley's fancy. They are not fairies such as used to 
inhabit earth and hold high carnival in the corollas of 
wood flowers, but they are new creations. The poem is 
full of pretty pictures, but no practical soul can ever 
guess what they mean. — 

'When kings are kings, and kings are men — 

And the lonesome rain is raining — 
who shall rule from the red throne then. 
And who shall wield the scepter when — 
When the winds are all complaining?' 



DISTINCTION ON WEEKLY PAPERS 39 

Beautiful, is it not? But what does it mean? Well, 
what does Poe's 'Ulalume' mean? It means the same 
that this does, an expression of the beautiful in melody 
and rhjrthm, that is so exquisite of itself it constitutes 
a living excellence. But Mr. Riley wants to call a 
halt in that direction now. One or two successes in 
nonsense rhyme is all that any man can achieve. The 
public is patient, but practical, and too much of that 
sort of thing puts it out of humor, and once out of 
humor it is hard to woo back." 

After warring in vain with the critics, Riley began 
to sigh for peace. **Enough of this pelting and pom- 
meling," he wrote his old Schoolmaster friend. "I am 
tired of flying. Give me a parachute. I want to make 
a landing. Shelter me in some sleeping wilderness, so 
far from the rustle of a newspaper and the strife of 
tongues that the moan of a dove will swoon on the 
silence." 

Such seclusion being unavailable, Riley called at the 
Saturday Herald office. Myron Reed had been in a 
few days before and expressed himself forcibly. '1 
am glad to hear," said Reed (as recorded by the 
editor), "that Riley has called for a parachute. I do 
not say that he should not write another Tlying 
Islands.' I agree with others that the poem Is musical. 
I rejoice that its author sees love in the eyes of a 
Wunkland princess. We may speculate about what 
life in the stars is like, and Riley in his astronomical 
drama, from the view-point of the stars, may set his 
characters to wondering what life on the earth is like 
— but it must not become habitual. Riley says he does 
not write of things above the clouds and under the 



40 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

earth because he does not see and hear them. He 
should abide by his own preaching. That sort of poetry- 
is written to order by a clique of literary primroses. 
It is not a picture drawn from life or taken on the 
spot. What would you think of a newspaper man 
shutting himself up in a room to write the news of the 
day? He could give you a series of words gram- 
matically arranged, but it would not be news. The 
best newspaper men tell truthfully what they have 
seen and heard, and so do the best poets. Skyrocketing 
is for the few. The multitude require manna, such 
poems as The Lost Path,' *A Mother-Song' and *My 
Bride That Is to Be.' The poet who writes things like 
these hears the trudge of humanity. Riley can not 
afford to put things together by the wrong end. He 
will not reach the people by flying away in a high 
wind, on a broomstick. The ocean we call the earth 
over which we have to sail is wide enough — and there 
will be fogs enough before we reach port." 

What Reed said was duly detailed to Riley and, 
according to the editor, it was digested and assimilated. 
Afterward the poet occasionally enveloped a short 
poem with mystery — ^but never again an astronomical 
drama. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 

RILEY was suspicious of friends when he should 
have been trustful. The seeds of distrust were 
sown early. When a lad in Greenfield he was 
lured from town by a boy who assured him there were 
trees in the woods that dripped honey as the maples 
dripped sugar-water. When they reached the center 
of a huge poplar grove on Little Brandywine the boy 
turned suddenly and said: **It is a lie — ^there ain't 
no such trees/' With that the boy ran away, laugh- 
ing, leaving young Riley to find his way out of the 
woods as best he could. "I was a turtle," said Riley; 
"the bad boy turned me over on my back and left me. 
I cried all the way home, not because I was lost, but 
because I had been deceived." 

The love of a friend, "the shining of a face upon a 
face" — no substitute for that. It is a poem with soul 
in it. Heaven admonished the poet to live that poem, 
but he did not always do it. On the contrary, he fre- 
quently exercised his "incapacity for lovely associa- 
tion." "It is in my flesh," he often repeated, "the sin 
that dwelleth in me; the good which I would do I do 
not, and the evil which I would not do I do," — and 
then came the hours of lonely remorse. 

The poet was ever ready to ratify treaties of friend- 
ship, but after they were ratified he wanted, some- 
times, to maintain them on about the same terms 

41 



42 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

that David Copperfield's mother maintained friendly 
relations with Peggotty: You are ray true friend, 
Peggotty, I know, if I have any in this world. 
When I call you a ridiculous creature, or a vexatious 
thing, or anything of that sort, I only mean that you 
are my true friend. So it was that the poet lost a 
friend, now and again, through no fault of the friend. 
An instance of his plain speaking and the remorse fol- 
lowing it is pathetically disclosed in an early letter to 
Charles Philips of Kokomo : 

The Morgue, Midnight, August 15, 1879. 
Dear Charles: 

I wrote you last evening, requesting especially, that 
you should answer me to-night, and looked certainly 
for a reply — ^for you have never failed me. But there 
was none. I can not tell you the depth of my disap- 
pointment and anxiety — for all evening I have gone 
about with a strange feeling of heaviness, and at last 
it has grown intolerable and I have just risen from 
my sleepless bed to write you this. In my letter of 
last evening I fear I unintentionally wounded you, and 
that you are "striking back*' with silence. I wrote 
hurriedly, I know, but it was with the very warmest 
feeling of brotherly regard. What I said, I distinctly 
said for the effect of force more than elegance, but it 
was not meant to hurt — neither was it as I thought an 
undue license in one as warmly interested in you as 
your own true character compels me to be. When I 
like any one, perhaps it is my fault to enter too deeply 
into their personal affairs, or, in other words — am in- 
clined to meddle with matters that do not concern me. 
If I have done this with you, I earnestly ask you to 
regard it as an insane burst of affection, for at worst 
it is that. I don't think you understand my real 
nature. I have thought different at times, but as I 
write, I fear with a regret there is no name for, that 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 43 

like the grand majority, you misjudge me. I do not 
blame you if you do, only it hurts, my dear friend, 
just to wade on through existence as I do with not 
one soul of all the world's wide millions that will see 
m.e as I am. I try very hard to laugh down this idea 
of mine that I am being eternally misinterpreted, but 
every fresh experience only seems more firmly to fix 
and rivet the truth of it within m_e. When I tell my 
friend I love him, I love him. There is no play in the 
grooves of my affection. And when a friend slides 
in my heart he fits there and the bony hand of Death 
can not jostle him. Maybe I do you wrong to doubt 
the strength of your regard, but I want such giant 
strengths of friendship that sometimes I think my 
own will never be matched here — that it is more than 
I could ask or expect. In any instance I am what I 
am. God made me so, and if I do not pass for my 
full value here, Heaven will be brighter comprehend- 
ing it. 

To-morrow I go down to Indianapolis. I may not 
hope to see you then as I desired; but wherever you 
are through life and death feel always that my love is 
with you. 

J. W. Riley. 

Not being a poet. Philips could not in entirety under- 
stand a poet. Soon, however, the two men were recon- 
ciled, and years later, after the editor's death, the poet 
was proud to say at a banquet that he had been "the 
guest of one of the loveliest men he had ever known, 
the bright young editor of the Kokomo Tribune" 

As shown by the letter to the editor, Riley's attitude 
toward friendship was one of extremes. He was 
either on the housetop ivith them or in the basement 
without them. There was no middle ground; they 
must be at the extremity of the fraternal scale, the 
upper extremity of course, and when they were not 



44 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

there they did not answer the requirements. If they 
were impatient with his feverish, often unintelligible 
moods, so much the worse for them. 

Nevertheless, in those early, providential years, 
many friends gathered around the poet. There was a 
brotherly conspiracy to promote his welfare, a com- 
bined desire — first among a few editors and writers, 
and soon among the people — ^to enlist under the poet's 
banner. It is remarkable the host of unselfish ad- 
mirers who, through a period of forty years, came 
forward with outstretched friendly hand. 

In that brotherly conspiracy were two friends who 
deserve from the reader more than, a bowing acquaint- 
ance — ^two friends, who could not come too often nor 
stay too long — ^two men, according to Riley, whose 
influence during his maturing years was most potent 
— Robert Burdette and Myron Reed. Burdette was 
the poet's sponsor on the platform ; Reed in literature. 

"Longfellow discovered poetic insight in me," said 
Riley; "Reed also discovered it, but he did more; he 
helped to bring it out." Those who should know have 
said that, had it not been for Reed, the public never 
would have enjoyed the Riley poems — an exaggeration, 
of course, although Riley, ever grateful to his friend, 
said, "It is the truth." 

"I pushed off from shore, through channels of chance 
and peril," Riley continued, "with such pilots as the 
Fates provided ; but out there in the offing, beyond the 
sand bars, were two friends awaiting me whose faith 
in my future never wavered. They knew that human 
hopes have their roots in human needs ; their love pre- 
vailed to the end." Late in life the poet recalled that 
they had often been true to him when he was untrue 




-wt\ >■ .^. 'J;. 



Egbert J. Burdette, who Introduced the Poet to the Lecture 

Platform 




Courtesy Indianapolis Literary Club 

Myron W. Reed 
From a portrait bv T. C. Steele 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 45 

to himself. They did for him what time does for all 
homely history — ^they softened his asperities and 
beautified his inequalities with their love. "We loved 
Riley so zealously," said Burdette, "that we almost 
made his faults venerable — what time has done, in a 
way, for Robert Burns.'' 

The two friends appeared on Riley's horizon before 
he was thirty, and were thus champions of his youth 
as well as of his maturity. He met one of them, after 
a long absence, and thus described the meeting : 

"And there was something in his tone, 

And in his look of love — 
And there was something in my own. 

The present knows not of: — 
We stood forgetful of To-day; 

And all its later store 
Of love and wealth was swept away, 

As we struck hands once more. 

"To meet fulfillment of our dreams 

Is very sweet; to know 
The need of gold, and gain it, seems 

A good for high and low; 
And sweet is love without regret. 

And lips that kiss and cling. 
But youthful friendship faithful yet — • 

That is the sweetest thing." 

Riley speculated considerably on the origin of friend- 
ships. Their coming into his life was like the birth of 
poems — a mystery. He could not account for affinities 
any more than he could for antipathies. Burdette had 
come down from a village in Pennsylvania, and Reed 
from the Green Mountains of Vermont. Who started 
and guided them to the Hoosier Poet's door? "Friends 



46 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

are made by something that can not be planned/' was 
Reed's word to the poet. **You never made a friend on 
purpose in your life. That a magnet will assemble 
steel filings was not settled by an act of Congress." 

"Friends take possession of me, I suppose/* returned 
Riley mischievously, "in about the same unexpected 
way that Peggotty was seized with fits of mental wan- 
dering. I am not permitted to pick out and choose my 
people. They come and they go, and they don't come 
and they don't go, just as they like." 

And there was the same mystery about a letter. It 
was a dead mute sheet of white paper, and yet alive 
and quivering with human qualities and emotions. 
"We get a letter from a friend," Riley once wrote, 
"with page after page of limpid-flowing humor and 
discriminating observations, and we await his coming 
on the tiptoe of expectation. Nothing, we think, can 
be more deliciously stimulating than our meeting. The 
path to our door grows golden with sunshine, and we 
imagine that the grass will sparkle with dewdrops 
when he comes ; but when we meet face to face we find 
him strangely uncommunicative and pathetically in- 
consequential — ^man or woman, the disappointment is 
the same — no warmth or impulse in anything he or 
she says — all the eloquence, spirit and enthusiasm of 
the letter just dead ashes dusted down the winds. Such 
tragic awakenings drive poets insane." 

But never was there a visit from Reed or Burdette, 
expected or unexpected, that v/as a disappointment. 
Theirs was "the miracle of unbroken friendship." 

At four o'clock, one icy December morning in 1879, 
Riley and Burdette met at Spencer, Indiana. It had 
been a dark night. Riley had driven across country. 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 47 

through slush and freezing rain, from Bloomington, 
where he had given a reading the evening before. The 
same evening the "Hav^keye Man" had lectured in 
Spencer on "The Rise and Fall of the Mustache." 
When he came down from his room in the hotel, so 
he said afterward, he found Riley at a table before a 
roaring grate fire, writing poetry. "It is curious," 
said Riley, after striking a glad hand with his com- 
rade, "how friends are made and where true fellow- 
ship begins. You and I have known each other all our 
lives and have never met before." 

"True," returned Burdette; "I suppose we boys did 
make war on weeds, Colorado beetles, and cutworms 
down on the old plantation, but just at this moment I 
fail to remember that we ever climbed into a melon 
patch together. What kind of an audience did you 
have in Bloomington?" 

"I succeeded in holding the janitor spellbound for 
an hour and a half," answered Riley. "I would have 
had two in my audience, but the town marshal slipped 
as he reached the top step and shot like a bullfrog 
down the stairway and across the street. Had it not 
been for the Court House fence, he would have slid 
half-way to Brown County. How did you fare in 
Spencer?" 

"The committee and the editor braved the storm 
rather than have the hall closed on me," said Burdette. 
" *Ladies and Gentlemen,* I began, after introducing 
myself to the audience, 'Adam raised Cain, but he did 
not raise a mustache.' Just then it suddenly occurred 
to me to look out over the sea of empty benches. Be- 
hold ! there was not a lady in the hall." 

The two new-old friends came to Indianapolis on a 



48 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

peep-o*-day train, "Riley to go on to speak his piece at 
Winchester, Indiana," said Burdette, "and I to go on 
to 'holler* at Xenia, Ohio." Truly it was for both the 
day of "small minorities" in Indiana. Twenty years 
went by before Burdette's fame and friends filled the 
largest auditorium in the Hoosier capital, when, in 
Riley*s fervent language, "the glory of his victory 
danced and shimmered over the city like heat above a 
kitchen stove." 

For a decade Burdette made it a point to come to 
Indianapolis to see Riley once a year. When in the 
city they were constantly together ; neither knew what 
fatigue meant, nor when it was time to go to bed or to 
get up. It was a glorious round of sparkling pleasure. 
Burdette regarded Riley as the most effervescent 
fellow he ever saw. He was always asking the poet 
questions to keep him conversationally stirred up. 
Sometimes they would meet Myron Reed at the 
Indianapolis Journal office — and then "the streams 
would overflow their banks." "What a set of lovers 
we three are," remarked Riley once to Burdette. 
"Reed brags on you, and I brag on you, and we both 
brag on you ; then he brags on me, and I brag on him, 
and we both brag on each other — till finally I just let 
all holds go and brag on myself." 

Since 1874 Burdette had been editor of the Burling- 
ton Hawkeye, and it was in that capacity that Riley 
had learned to love him. Before their meeting at 
Spencer, the editor, without knowing it, had inspired 
"The Funny Little Fellow," the first poem Riley sent 
to a standard magazine. The poem's early date, 
December, 1876, seems to make good Riley's claim 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 49 

that the two men were friends before they met. In 
January, 1880, Riley wrote as follows: 

Dear Man: 

Do not want to clog your time but I must hold you 
with my glittering pen long enough to thank you for 
your kindly mention of me in your Spencer letter. It 
was a good thing to say and a mighty good way you 
said it. But years ago I said a good thing about you. 
You never knew it perhaps, for it was when the soul 
of me had been out ''high-lonesorning,*' and had run 
up against your own out there in Burlington. What 
I said started out like this : 

'Twas a Funny Little Fellow 

Of the very purest type. 
For he had a heart as mellow 

As an apple over-ripe. 
And the brightest little twinkle 

When a funny thing occurred, 
And the lightest little tinkle 

Of a laugh you ever heard. 

You laughed away the sorrow and the gloom. I 
had mothers in the poem loving you and babies crow- 
ing for you, and ended what I wrote (just as it will 
some glorious time, I pray) like this : 

And I think the Angels knew him, 

And had gathered to await 
His coming, and run to him 

Through the widely opened Gate, 
With their faces gleaming sunny 

For his laughter-loving sake, 
And thinking, "What a funny 

Little Angel he will make!" 

Yours always, with all hale affection, 

J. W. Riley. 



50 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

In Burdette, Riley found a friend who never lost his 
youth. *1 would not give a peppercorn for a man who 
suppresses his enthusiasm," said Burdette on one of 
his return trips to Indianapolis. "From the standpoint 
of enthusiasm, what was the chief event of our Cen- 
tennial Year? It was not a Liberty handkerchief or 
the Philadelphia Exposition. It was that bedlam scene 
in our National Capitol, when Blaine, speaking on a 
question of personal privilege, vindicated himself on 
the floor of the House, when representatives wore 
themselves out with cheering, when the galleries be- 
came turbulent and the police helpless as babes in a 
flood. There were actors in that legislative body. 
Blaine was an actor. 

"I believe in enthusiasm," Burdette continued; '1 
was in Michigan yesterday. I tried to make eyes take 
fire, and hearts beat a little faster up there at Ross- 
ville. I have traveled two hundred miles out of my 
way to have some fun. I want to break every parlia- 
mentary rule in Cushing's Manual. The world's a 
stage — all men are players. Blaine gave his show 
without call-boys or scene-shifters. So can we. Let 
us play.'' 

And those play-fellows played. Writing a friend 
from Indianapolis about a few of the rollicking fea- 
tures of their play, Riley said : "Burdette stopped off 
here to see me, from eight in the evening until four in 
the morning — and what fun! I could never tell you 
half of it. The little man went mad — stark, staring 
mad — and so did I, in this old faded room of mine. 
We played circus ; he was the master of the arena and 
rode chairs around the room and did contortion acts 
and feats of strength, and so forth. Then he insisted 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 51 

upon being an elephant and made me his keeper and 
exhibitor; and I steered him into the ring despite his 
rumblings or expostulations, and reared him upon his 
fore legs firmly, and then planted him on his hind 
legs and spun him round and round one way and back 
the other. Then he whistled and 'went lame' in any 
leg at will; and then his intrepid keeper lay supinely 
down while the colossal monster walked over him. 
There were two local actors with us. You would have 
died, as they did, to see how ludicrously perfect was 
every motion, and the incredible awkwardness and 
care of the elephant as he slowly stepped down each 
foot, one at a time, in this most remarkable per- 
formance." 

"Happy days they were," wrote Burdette in memory 
of them. **How they bubbled over with laughter. How 
many times I have turned out of my way, just to have 
a day and a night with Riley. I met him at the door 
of the Indianapolis Journal office one night. 'Where 
are you going?' he demanded. 'Nowhere,' I said. 
'Anywhere. I've just come down from LaPorte to put 
in one camp-fire with you.' He said he had an assign- 
ment to report a 'wind fight,' but he would sublet it, 
which he did. (The 'wind fight' was an oratorical 
contest.) And we prowled about Indianapolis, and 
climbed up into newspaper offices, and invaded the 
rooms of fellows whom we knew, or loitered here and 
there by ourselves, under no pretext of hunting 
material, or making 'character studies,' or of doing 
anj^hing else useful — merely filling the night with our 
talk, and the delight of being with each other." 

Once Burdette was one of a group in a back corner 
of the Journal office, when Riley recited "The Object 



52 JAMES WHITCOMB EILEY 

Lesson." "That audience/' said Burdette, "beat any 
public one that ever drew a watch on me or coaxed me 
into silence by their slumbers. There were brilliant 
men in it, among them a future president of the United 
States." Burdette was so certain after that that Riley 
could magnetize a public audience that he went home 
and wrote the following, which he sent abroad to 
lecture bureaus and committees, and had printed in 
many newspapers: 

Office of "The Hawkeye," Burlington, Iowa. 
It has been my pleasure to listen to Mr. J. W. Riley, 
and I never heard him say a tiresome word or utter a 
stupid sentence. I would walk through the mud or 
ride through the rain to hear him again. I would get 
out of bed to listen to him. If I have a friend on a 
lecture committee in the United States, I want to 
whisper in his ear that one of the best hits he can 
make will be to surprise his audience with J. W. Riley 
and his "Object Lesson." Riley is good clean through. 
His humor is gentle; it is not caustic. It is pure and 
manly, and the people that will once listen to him will 
want him back again the same season. 

R. J. Burdette. 

Riley always recalled this generous act of his friend 
with thanksgiving. "I owe a debt to Burdette," he 
said, "which I can never repay. He was my first 
sponsor in the lecture field. He took me up and put 
me before the public and the lyceum bureaus. It was 
through him that I won hearty rounds of applause 
when I appeared in lecture courses for the first time." 

Robert Jones Burdette! Always the night v/as 
jeweled with light when Riley could think of this man. 

There were chums, comrades, associates, well- 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 53 

wishers, and play-fellows in the Riley gallery of friend- 
ship, but the Aristides was Myron Winslow Reed, who 
at that time occupied the pulpit of the First Presby- 
terian Church at Indianapolis. A man of eccentricities, 
but a big man, with a great heart and a great brain. 
He hated cant, and all hypocrisies, was a religious 
liberal, a fighter and something of a rebel. He read 
every good thing he could get his hands on, preached 
brilliantly, talked little and seldom was known to make 
a parish call. 

Their first meeting was at the Memorial Day exer- 
cises. Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, 1878 — a 
gathering of three thousand people, where Reed offered 
prayer and Riley read **The Silent Victors." "Had 
that prayer been reported," said General John Coburn, 
who was the orator of the day, "it would have been 
immortal as was the poem." Riley was certain about 
the immortality in the prayer, but uncertain about it 
in the poem. "Reed's prayer," said he, "was the prayer 
of experience. He was a graduate of the Civil War. 
He had wept over dying men. He had seen, 

*0n battlefields, the scarlet dew 
That drips from patriot veins.' " 

"We met at Crown Hill," said Reed, "but I had 
known Riley before. I live a great deal with friends 
I have never seen. You can love a woman — you can 
love a man — ^whom you have never met, to whom you 
have not written a letter, or sent a telegram. I did 
not have to meet Riley to know him. Did I not know 
that the harp he plays upon is the sweetest one in the 
world ? Had I not mooned over his 'August,' and seen 
the gleaming face of Day sink into the slumbering 



54 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

arms of Night? Had I not beheld the reflex of a man 
of genius in his Tame'? Had I not heard the good 
expressed above the wrong in 'John Walsh'? Had I 
not recoiled from the dregs of a ruined reputation in 
his 'Dead Selves'? Did I not know that we are not 
always glad when we smile? Why should I look at the 
poet's features? The music in his heart harmonized 
with that in my own." 

An odd feature of their friendship was the absence 
of letters. Riley explained that they used the "tele- 
pathic method." The Denver papers containing Reed's 
weekly sermons, and postal cards, were sufficient, after 
the preacher moved to Colorado — tokens of love 
eternal: "As always your vast debtor and grateful, 
faithful and enduring for all ages and for all worlds, 
James Whitcomb Riley." 

"I suppose," said Riley, "that I have lured Reed 
through the side door of the Indianapolis Jourrval 
office a hundred times, saying to myself when we were 
seated alone, 'Now he will tell me his life-story.' He 
never did." Combining fragments of his history, then 
and after, Riley came to know that Reed had gone 
hungry and without a bed. Sitting on a bench in New 
York's Madison Square, he had eaten his last lunch 
and thrown the crumbs to sparrows. Moneyless and 
weary, he had gone aboard a fishing smack and sailed 
for Newfoundland. "Nothing more dreary than clean- 
ing cod and halibut by day and blowing a fog horn by 
night." Returning, he had mowed marsh grass on 
the Hudson, distributed campaign documents for 
Horace Greeley, taught school in the Catskills, and 
gone west to "the precarious existence of a country 
editor in Wisconsin." He had been a preacher in 



THE FORTUNE OF FRIENDSHIP 55 

Milwaukee, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Denver. 
He had felt the sharp edge of misfortune, and the blows 
of circumstance had strengthened and tempered him. 
"He did not blow a whistle," said Riley, "to tell you 
he was going to stop. He quit. Once in our city he 
stood before a great audience, tall, grim, commanding, 
and said: 'It is enough to say that Wendell Phillips 
is the speaker and Charles Sumner the subject.' When 
he made a speech his thoughts went straight home 
like carrier pigeons. He was no more an orator in one 
sense than is a man who reads the newspaper to his 
family. In another — the Emersonian sense — ^there was 
no better orator in the West. And there was no better 
friend — old, young ; high, humble ; rich, poor ; educated, 
ignorant; wise, foolish — all without distinction came 
within the folds of his friendship." 

Such in brief is the man who discovered the Hoosier 
Poet, "that is," said Reed, "I discovered him as Colum- 
bus discovered America — a great many people had 
discovered him before I did." 

Riley always and fondly acknowledged his debt and 
affirmed on various occasions that Reed turned him 
squarely around and made him face the right way. 
To Reed's influence and inspiration we to-day are be- 
holden for such poems as "The Prayer Perfect," "The 
Song I Never Sing," "To Robert Burns," "Let Some- 
thing Good Be Said," and the tender lines, "Reach 
Your Hand to Me"— 

"Groping somewhere in the night, 
Just a touch, however light. 
Will make all the darkness bright. 
Sometime there will come an end — 
Reach your hand to me, my friend." 




CHAPTER IV 
WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 

ARLY in September, 1876, Riley's friend and 
schoolmate, Hamilton J. Dunbar, died in "the 
gleaming dawn of name and fame," as the poet 
put it. Dunbar was a brilliant young attorney, a man 
of really great influence and an orator who had 
attracted the favorable consideration of such famous 
statesmen as Richard W. Thompson and Daniel W. 
Voorhees. 

Among the many tributes paid to young Dunbar's 
memory was Riley's poem, ''Dead in Sight of Fame," 
which he read at the meeting of the Greenfield bar. 
The poem attracted the attention of visiting attorneys, 
among them Judge E. B. Martindale, proprietor of the 
Indianapolis Journal. 

**My meeting the Judge on the memorial occasion," 
said Riley, "was another day of fortunate beginnings." 
And it was, for in the following February the Journal 
printed "The Remarkable Man," a sketch, with the 
poem, "In the Dark." " 'The Remarkable Man,' " said 
the Journal^ editorially, "is a rather remarkable com- 
position." This appreciative notice brimmed Riley 
with delight. "I was as tickled over it," he said, "as 
a boy on the Fourth of July, when he hears the bang 
of the first gun." 

A week or so later Judge Martindale sent by a friend 
an invitation for Riley to call at the ofliice. Not receiv- 

56 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 57 

ing the call as soon as he expected, he wrote the poet 
as follows: 

THE JOURNAL 

Indianapolis, February 27, 1877. 
Jas. W. Riley, 
Greenfield, Ind. 
My dear Sir: 

I want to thank you for the article and poem sent 
the Journal, I am sure you have a future and will 
help with the Journal to make it whatever your appli- 
cation and industry deserves. I hope you will call on 
me when you are in the city. I may be able to make 
some suggestions and afford you encouragement. I 
like to help young men who help themselves. 

Truly yours, 

E. B. Martindale. 

The letter contained a check for ten dollars, which 
the poet's admiring friends thought trivial for a con- 
tribution that was "making the Journal popular," but 
Riley held a different opinion: 

Greenfield, Indiana, February 28, 1877. 
E. B. Martindale— Editor: 

The good letter you gave me yesterday is like the 
warm grasp of a friend. I can not tell you what a 
deep sense of pleasure I experience at the honesty of 
every utterance, nor can I express the great strength 
of my gratitude. 

Since *'each word of kindness, come whence it may, 
is welcome to the poor," I count myself most highly 
honored by the interest you manifest. 

I thank you for the invitation you extend me, and 
will assuredly call upon you when in your city. 
Very gratefully yours, 

J. W. Riley. 



58 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Riley was flattered by the praise of his prose that 
came from many quarters, but what he wanted most 
of all was that the Journal should become the medium 
for the circulation of his poems. It was the first daily 
to show a cordial interest in his future. It would 
carry his name to remote comers of the state. So he 
chose a poem from his slender stock and sent it to the 
Indianapolis paper. It was promptly accepted and 
printed. That poem, illustrated and made into a book 
by Riley's publishers, has sold in quantities that chal- 
lenge the imagination, earning a fortune in royalties 
and fixing the poet's name in the minds and hearts of 
countless readers. It was "An Old Sweetheart of 
Mine." 

Indianapolis, March 9, 1877. 
James W, Riley, Esq. 
My dear Sir: 

I have just read the beautiful poem you sent the 
Journal to-day and take this opportunity to compli- 
ment you upon it. I must say I think it is equal to 
anything I have read for years. I will take in the 
future any prose or poetry you may write and will 
compensate you for what you furnish. Have also 
directed the Daily and Weekly sent you. 
Truly your friend, 

E. B. Martindale. 

Not since his "hurricane of delight" over the Long- 
fellow letter had Riley been in such a flutter as he was 
over this cordial word from the Journal. He "felt," 
to use his own words, "that ultimately he would be 
employed on the Journal'' but then, in 1877, he "was 
not big enough for so big an opportunity." For the 
present it was sweet to know others loved his "Old 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 59 

Sweetheart" — sweet to see the curtain lifted, sweet to 
anticipate success, and he so expressed himself in his 
reply to the Judge's letter. 

The friendly relation thus established, although he 
was not regularly employed on the paper until two 
years later, covered a period of twenty years. He was 
soon known as the ^'Journal's Poet," and justly so, for 
at least half of all his printed productions appeared in 
its columns, possibly more than half of all the poet 
wrote in his most prolific years — from January, 1877, 
to the publication of his Old-Fashioned Roses, 1888. 
He wrote anonymously or over a pen name while win- 
ning distinction on the weekly papers. When writing 
for the Journal he signed his own name, with few ex- 
ceptions, at first J. W. Riley, then James W. Riley, and 
after April, 1881, James Whitcomb Riley — ''my full 
name for two reasons," he said; "first, because there 
were other James Rileys in Indianapolis and I kept 
getting letters from their girls; and second, to avoid 
confusion with that host of Rileys, named in good old- 
fashioned manner after the celebrated John Wesley." 

After the success of "The Remarkable Man," it 
seemed assured that Riley's fortune lay with the 
Journal, In April, 1877, however, as seen in The 
Youth of James Whitcomb Riley, the poet cast his lot 
with the Anderson Democrat, and doubtless would 
have flourished there longer had not the Poe-Poem 
hoax overwhelmed him with chagrin and sent him to 
hide his diminished head in rural obscurity. 

Speaking of him at this time, his chum, George Carr, 
said : "Riley did not have an extra coat to his name, 
but he did have genius. He was a small man with a 
most uncommon large head, and what he had inside 



60 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

that head nobody, not even he himself, could tell. He 
was not a scholar, but he knew a great deal that 
scholars know, and a great deal that they do not know. 
It would have been a stiff job had we Fortville fellows 
attempted to take stock of what he knew. But, my 
dear sir, he took stock of things around him, don't 
forget that. The notes he made for poems and stories 
would fill a nail keg. His room was a confusion of 
notes. There were notes under his lamp, notes under 
his pillow, notes in his shoes, notes in his hat, notes 
pinned to the wall, and, unbelievable as it seems, there 
were notes crumpled away in the folds of his 
umbrella." 

That the Jotirnal had not lost its hold on Riley's 
affections is shown in a letter to the editor, dated Sep- 
tember, 1877. The "excitement of doing nothing" had 
worn him out, and he was juggling a few ideas together 
in the hope of producing something that would interest 
Journal readers. The juggling, as he called it, resulted 
in one of the most delightful of Riley's longer dialect 
poems — ''Squire Hawkins's Story." On reflection, how- 
ever, Riley feared the Journal would reject the story, 
and rather than suffer that misfortune, he laid the 
poem aside and later sent it to the Indianapolis Herald. 
There were grounds for suspecting that the Journal 
did not care for the humorous in dialect, as shown in 
the following: 

Greenfield, Indiana, January 11, 1878. 
Mr. E. B. Martindale, 
Dear Sir: 

I write to enclose a poem for the Journal, and to 
ask in what particular — if any — the humorous items 
sent you Monday are not suitable for publication. I 




Judge E. B. Martindale, Pkoprietok of the Indianapolis 
Journal — 1875 




John C. New, Proprietor of The Indianapolis Journal, in the 

'Eighties 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 61 

am more than eager to please you, and to be of service ; 
and wherein I fail may be due only to my not compre- 
hending fully the exact character of the work you 
asked me to do. 

It may be an erroneous idea — certainly not an ego- 
tistical one to feel the assurance I do of pleasing the 
public with quaint paragraphs — at any rate I earnestly 
desire that the test be made, and if I fail, I will meet 
the disappointment like a man; and if I win, my 
pleasure shall be yours. 

Will you do me the honor to write me a line or two 
when leisure affords, and tell me frankly where my 
failings are. Trusting you will favor me with this 
request, I am, 

Ever gratefully yours, 

J. W. Riley. 

Through 1878 and 79, Riley contributed to the 
Journal without marked interruption. "Send me your 
best effusions for the Sunday Journal*' wrote Judge 
Martindale, in October, 1878. When the Judge re- 
ceived the Christmas story for the year, "The Boss 
Girl," (later entitled "Jamesy"), his demands became 
imperative. "Riley belongs to the Journal,'' said the 
Judge to Myron Reed. "He will come high ; neverthe- 
less we must have him." 

Still the poet continued to "scatter." He was having 
a gay time with the weeklies. He wanted to be an out- 
and-out m_an of the world, wanted to travel, by which 
he meant walk and talk with his fellow Hoosiers of 
town and country. To be denied this would be a mis- 
fortune. "If I could be a tolerated factor in a news- 
paper office," he remarked to a friend, "the risk would 
not be so great; just loiter round the office, run through 
the files for exercise, and write a skit or two when 
the spirit moved — ^that would be ideal." 



62 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

At a later period the poet gave other reasons for his 
delay in attaching himself exclusively to the Journal 
staff. "I had queer ideas of the value and destiny of 
poetry in those days/' he remarked. "The fact that 
poetry was a commodity to be bought and paid for 
struck me as a kind of mythical idea. Particularly I 
was not reconciled to the thought of being paid for it 
by salary. Then, too, I had the rather whimsical 
notion that verse was something to be cut into strips, 
slices and bolts, and sold at so much per hunk. When 
I was asked to write poetry to order, I painfully 
realized the danger of letting verse slip through my 
fingers without receiving careful revision. In a word, 
I could not bring myself to think of writing stuff 
simply for money. That idea I have tried to hold to 
rigidly in all my work." 

Riley also had overtures from other cities, one from 
the Terre Haute Courier, proffering a half interest in 
the paper, but his favorable reply was lost, and when, 
a year later, the letter was found in the Terre Haute 
post-office, the poet was safe in the arms of the Journal^ 
at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. 

The decision — reached in November, 1879 — ^was 
largely due to Myron Reed. ''There is a certain dis- 
advantage," wrote Reed, "in living in the town where 
you were born and raised — ^they will call you by your 
given name. Whatever you may become, people will 
grade you down to where you were ; they will remem- 
ber you as a boy. Their applause will not be generous 
or unanimous. If you have ever done anjrthing 
ridiculous — and you have — it is remembered. Come 
West, young man, come to Indianapolis. Leave your 
mistakes behind." 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 63 

Riley held similar views, but was slow to express 
them. "It is hard for old neighbors to praise a new 
author/* he remarked a short time after moving to the 
city. "All the while they are thinking he can not do 
it, and their thinking so, though they do not suspect it, 
is a block in the way of his progress. It is the way 
of the world, you know ; Greenfield is no more a sinner 
in this regard than other towns." 

Reed counseled the proprietors of the Journal to 
"let Riley write poems. What was Burns' real work?" 
he asked. "Why, he whistled while he plowed, and at 
night wrote a song on a scrap of paper that suited the 
whistle. His real business — ^the songs he wrote — 
lasted." 

Being established on the Journal^ Riley began to 
write to his friends. "I have been coming to anchor 
here," he wrote one, November 27, 1879, "and have 
been neglecting everybody. Could not help it." To 
another he explained that he had been plunging away 
like a race-horse. "I am bothered about getting set- 
tled in this infernal city. I am not used to it, and 
don't believe I ever will be. Lots of features about it 
that are lovely, but the racket and rattle of it all is 
positively awful — no monotony on God's earth like it." 

"I would rather be a houseless rover in a sylvan 
wilderness," was his word to a Journal employee. On 
several occasions he sighed for his nomadic days, when 
he "was not burdened with baggage, cares, or ambi- 
tions." In contrast to his early dislike for the city of 
his adoption, was his love of it twenty years later. 
Homeward bound from a long, weary reading tour, 
approaching the city in the early morning, just as 
familiar buildings were emerging from the shadows, 



64 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the treasured words of his old Herald friend, George 
Harding, fell from his lips: "I have returned to the 
dear old town to live and die among the people who 
know the best and the worst of me — ^to spend the re- 
mainder of my life with friends who have been friends 
to me when I was not a friend to myself." This was 
not the poet's remark on one home-coming only. Again 
and again he repeated the words, and almost always 
added that "the one sure way of getting a correct 
appreciation of Indianapolis is to go away from it." 

Thus, as Bill Nye expressed it, Riley was employed 
on the Journal Works. Thus his love began to make 
a shrine of "the good, old Journal office," which in 
years to follow was "always like home" to him. "He 
was lonesome at first," said a Journal employee. 
"Standing on the street corners after his poem had 
been contributed to the daily issue, he looked like a 
farmer, who had come to town because it was too wet 
to plow." Soon, however, he made friends of the 
reportorial force and began the nightly custom of 
lunching at cheap restaurants. Miles', on Market 
Street, being the favorite resort of the "gang." 

"There was an ambition concealed about my person," 
said Riley, "as I towered above Welsh rarebit and 
mince pie, and I was quite hopeful that one day the 
world at large would know of it. Along with my ambi- 
tion came a notice that I was delinquent to the tune 
of twenty dollars in taxes due the State of Indiana, 
County of Marion. The county treasurer openly in- 
formed me that the law made it his duty to levy on 
and sell my personal property unless said tax was 
paid, and would I please tuck my little delinquent 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 65 

notice in my pocket, and call and settle and relieve 
him of a disagreeable duty. 

"There came also with my Hudibrastic ambition/' 
Riley continued, *'a juicy request from the leading mer- 
chant of Wabash Town that I return the five dollars 
I borrowed while publishing his name and business to 
the world on barns and fences. This — that— and a 
thousand other vexations did at last awaken in my 
blind perceptive faculty the conviction that a little 
kickshaw poet in a big city is not worth a tomtit on 
a pump handle. The Fates kept boring, and by and 
by it dawned on my Waterbury mentality that my 
tv/enty-five dollars a week in the city was not equal to 
my two dollars a poeni in Greenfield.'' 

Whether his wages were average or small, the poet 
seemed hopelessly incapable of saving anything out of 
them. Like a boy, he must promptly spend his earn- 
ings. An early friend relates that soon after receiving 
his first check from the Journal^ Riley was in the city 
one day, when his eye fell on a red silk hat in a Wash- 
ington Street shop window. Price five dollars. Its 
flaming color was more than the poet could stand. He 
must have it, and at last the dealer parted with it for 
four dollars, the total amount in Riley's pocket. All 
he had left was a return-trip ticket to Greenfield. 

A collection of impressions of Riley when he came 
to the Journal would include such terms as — undis- 
tinguished-looking — unripe in knowledge and green in 
judgment — an unsuspecting nature — immature and in- 
experienced — unaffected, straightforward, simple. 
Charles Martindale of Indianapolis, city editor of the 
Journal at the time, remembers that among writers 



66 JAMES WHITCOMB KILEY 

and contributors to the paper, Riley — interesting to 
the nth degree — was, in manners and dress, about the 
most diverting and conspicuous example of agricul- 
tural verdancy it had been his good fortune to meet. 

Senator Harry S. New gives an impression of the 
poet as he knew him in those diffident days, when 
Riley, in his own words, "groaned under a pyramid of 
bashfulness and misery." The Senator was then police 
court reporter on the Journal — no more dreaming of 
a seat in the United States Senate than did Riley of 
glory and renown. 

"My first impression of the poet," said the Senator, 
"was that of a young man, modest to the point of 
diffidence, clad in a suit evidently bought in a Green- 
field store with the idea that it would about meet the 
demands of the metropolis. He was not only modest, 
but bashful — almost painfully so. 

"We had desks in the same room at the old Indian- 
apolis Journal office and became not only friends, but 
boon companions at the very start. Perhaps this was 
the natural result of the fact that the nature of my 
v/ork and Riley^s predilection for late hours brought 
us together in the moments of our leisure, after the 
paper had gone to press. I have seen him sit for long 
periods at his old desk, under one of the old-style 
lamps used in newspaper offices of that day, occupied 
not in serious effort, but in drawing quaint pictures 
and fancy lettering. In fact, I don't believe he ever 
produced a single thing at that desk that found its way 
into print. This he did in his room, wherever that 
happened to be during frequent changes, before he 
'settled down' on Lockerbie Street. He was one of the 
most inveterate jokers I ever knew, and many a night 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 67 

I have sat with him and George Harding or Romeo 
Johnson in Top' June's restaurant from two A. M. 
till long after daylight, listening to Riley's stories, 
imitations and improvisations. The introduction of an 
outsider always stopped his hilarity; his modesty 
caused him to draw into his shell in the presence of 
strangers. It was only with his intimates that his 
wonderful versatility showed itself. 

**He was one of the most unusual characters I ever 
knew. There is no one with whom to compare him. 
His personality was as individual as his writing. No 
man who knew him, particularly in the early days, 
could ever forget him." 

Among the poet's Indianapolis friends was Anna 
Nicholas, who had just been promoted to the editorial 
rooms of the Journal, She knew Riley in his "come- 
dian days," as he phrased it, when his long fiery mus- 
tache was a distinguishing feature. 

"Riley had other talents than that of writing verse," 
Miss Nicholas said. '*He was witty, full of dry humor, 
and possessed an inimitable gift of story-telling. And 
so he was made welcome in many and varying circles. 
One of these was what might be called the Informal 
Club, a group of men whose habit was usually in the 
forenoons to drop into the private office of the Jour- 
naVs owner and publisher. Among the notable men 
of this group were Myron Reed, William P. Fishback, 
a brilliant lawyer, Benjamin Harrison, and Elijah W. 
Halford, afterward President Harrison's private 
secretary." 

Another Riley Indianapolis friend of those days was 
the newspaper correspondent, Miss Laura Ream. "It 
makes a big part of the sunshine of my daily life," she 



68 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

wrote, "to fall in with James Whitcomb Riley, which 
I am apt to do any fine morning that I make the 
circuit of the newspaper offices. His abiding-place is 
the cosy ground-floor office of the Journal, but it is his 
favorite habit to saunter up and down the sunny side 
of Washington Street, peering into shop windows, or 
into the faces of all he meets, with his near-sighted 
expression, as much as to say, is this any one I should 
know? The young fair-haired man would be recog- 
nized by a stranger as an artist of some kind, most 
likely a musician, for the turn of the head, slightly 
inclined to the left, is that of a violinist, with ear intent 
upon what he hears. It would not be a mistake wild of 
the mark, for the poet is keenly alive to all the voices 
of Nature and human nature.'* 

As has been said, there were as many portraits of 
Riley as there were observers. It is evident, for in- 
stance, that Senator New knew a Riley Judge Mar- 
tindale did not know, and Miss Nicholas knew a Riley 
Miss Ream did not know, and his intimates a Riley the 
public did not know. In a sense, every man, par- 
ticularly the artistic and the temperamental, lives sev- 
eral lives and presents various aspects at various times. 
All of which adds to the difficulties of the biographer's 
task. ''He may construct an episode," writes Albert 
Bigelow Paine, "present a picture, or reflect a mood by 
which the reader may know a little of the substance 
of the past. At best his labor will be pathetically in- 
complete, for whatever the detail of his work and its 
resemblance to life, these will record mainly but an 
outward expression, behind which was the mighty 
sweep and tumult of unwritten thought, the over- 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 69 

whelming proportion of any life, which no other 
human soul can ever really know." 

In a revised paragraph of an early unpublished 
story, Riley portrays himself in a picturesque indi- 
vidual, who dwells in the primitive village of Paradise 
Point, and who fondly displays in front of his cottage 

"A poet's sign on a slender slat 
Swinging in the wind like an acrobat." 

When he came to the Journal^ the early vision still 
possessed him. The last night of the year 1879, while 
*'snowy December was tapping on the window-pane," 
he stares dreamily at the pictures on the office wall — 
a map of Mexico, a colored lithograph of Washington, 
and a gray dusty bust of Gutenberg on a shelf. He 
leans back in his chair, blinks his eyes and looks 
again — 

"A file of papers from a rack 
Unfolds a pair of legs, and then 

A pair of arms, and leaps and stands 
In pleading posture at his chair, 
With fluttering pages, and a pair 
Of cruel scissors in its hands." 

At the moment the old clock on the shelf, whose 
habit is "to make timely remarks," points its finger at 
the poet and *'wonders if he sees the point" ; 

*'And then it goes off in a fit 

Of pealing laughter, loud and long, 
And all the pictures join in it, 
And cry aloud, *A song! A song! 



t ft 



70 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The frosty air seems to be haunted with a mystic 
symphony. The poet hears the music of harps and 
violins : 

"And then a voice of such a tone 
Of tenderness and merriment 
He does not know it as his own, 
And welling strangely over all, 
Sweet words upon his senses fall." 

After listening a while, in his dream, to the voices 
of children, whispers of love, and peals of laughter, the 
poet starts up abruptly and stares about him in blank 
surprise. He is back in the world of editors, printers 
and pressmen — but he has answered the summons of 
the Muse. Having 

"Sung the song — the echoes fled 

In merriment around the room — 
Old Gutenberg stood on his head 

And brushed his w^hiskers with a broom — • 
The file of papers scrambled back 

To its old perch upon the rack — 
And Washington, upon the wall. 

Looked gravely at the clock and said — 
'Toll lightly, the Old Year is dead— 

A happy New Year to you all !* " 

So it may be said that Riley entered the year 1880 
with the signet of song on his brow, the Journal, in 
the main, permitting him to "do his own work in his 
own way." True, he wrote prose, particularly during 
the two years following — such sketches as "Eccentric 
Mr. Clark," "Where Is Mary Alice Smith?" "The Boy 
From Zeeny," and such editorials as "The Giant on 
the Show-Bills," "The Way We Walk," "The Old 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 71 

Fiddler" and "Mr. Trillpipe on Puns/* but they were 
not written with the seriousness of purpose that he 
wrote song. To say it as the poet said it, he "wrote 
prose with a kind of feeling that he had gone over to 
the enemy." 

Throughout 1880 Riley was "up to his ears in work," 
scarcely had time to hear the venerable Bronson Alcott 
talk before the Women's Club. Letters came from 
friends, some to compliment, some to warn against 
the "loss of leisure" and the danger of "intrepid haste 
in composition." "You are like a violin with all the 
strings let down," wrote Ella Wheeler; "the strings 
must be drawn up slowly or they will snap." "All 
kinds of graces and good fortune attend you," wrote 
B. S. Parker; "the sacred Nine still fall upon your 
consecrated head." 

In May, 1880, the ownership of the Journal was 
transferred to John C. New and son. With the transfer 
came a change of policy. The managing editor wanted 
to make the paper measure up to big newspaper 
standards — "the world's history of a day." Riley pre- 
ferred to "see it blossom with the quiet grandeur of 
simple things." The editor wanted humorous editorials 
and he wanted Riley to write them — and he wanted 
them to be ready at the call for "copy." Riley could 
not work under such a strain, had to write when he 
felt like it, and could not produce when crowded. "You 
want me to write poetry at odd times," said he; "I 
want poetry to be the chief consideration — editorials, 
secondary." 

The managing editor made strenuous efforts to 
curtail expenses. To pay for poetry did not pay. "The 
way that editor tracked innocent expenditures to their 



72 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

origin and lambasted their victims was atrocious," said 
Riley. "He knew everything that was going on ; every 
morning he knew which cockroach had sipped the most 
paste the night before/' 

Riley did not serve the Journal as a reporter, 
although he mingled freely with the ''boys'* when night 
came. "I had a peculiar position," he said. "My 
editor-in-chief was one of the most indulgent men in 
the world and let me do pretty much as I pleased. I 
wrote when I felt like it, and vfhen I did not, nothing 
was said. At first when called on for a certain thing 
by a certain time I grew apprehensive and nervous, 
but I soon solved the problem. I learned to keep a 
stack of poems and prose on hand, and when there was 
a big hole in the paper and they called for 'copy' I gave 
them all they wanted. Sometimes it would be a book 
review, again a so-called editorial, and oftener some 
odds and ends that I had written in spare moments — 
and once a week perhaps an unsigned skit or a jingle 
for the old cigar box" (a receptacle in the office for 
anonymous contributions) . 

"As time passed," continued Riley, "my managing 
editor grew more charitable. He continued, however, 
to look to quantity more than quality. The reporters 
were my friends, too. Some of them went in and out 
among the farmers ; they would talk and listen to them 
and then report to me. There was one clerk who 
remembered to tell me the quaint and curious things 
that were said when subscribers came to sign for the 
paper. A friend on the Indianapolis News did the 
same. 

"An advantage, or disadvantage, of the newspaper 
profession," Riley continued, "is that its members are 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 73 

compelled to know the shams of the world, the weak- 
ness of the community, its vanities and mistakes. All 
of which flowed through the Journal rooms — dull 
speakers called to have it said in print that they were 
eloquent — ^women wanted to shine in the society 
column — men in the wrong wanted to be reported 
right — and now and then a crack-brained philosopher 
came with a story as long as his linen duster — and 
bores came asking two minutes of time and taking two 
hours. The world with its excellence and follies flows 
through the reportorial rooms. Thus, I had a con- 
stant and inexhaustible supply of new expressions 
from all sorts and conditions of men, and new ideas 
simply or extravagantly told. Many of the phrases 
picked up in this way were ready for use without 
polishing, for the speech of the people is usually full 
of rhythm, if we have the ear to hear it; and it is 
usually direct. Thus, I was brought into contact with 
all phases of life. My journalistic work gave me an 
insight into human nature, which I could have acquired 
in no other way. It taught me also to try to give the 
public what it wants." 

The poet expressed his debt to the newspaper at a 
banquet given the "boys" soon after he came to the 
JournaL 'The weighty honor of saying a few words" 
being laid upon him, he referred to the press as "a 
vast jury that industriously and tirelessly supplied 
verdicts on all the great and leading questions of the 
age. It had grown to its present magnificent propor- 
tions on our prolific American soil. Its eagle eye was 
to see everything, ferret out crime, condemn and exe- 
cute criminals, stand sentinel to the general good, stir 
up the lethargy of the body politic, and last and not 



74 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

least, preserve literature, and in particular promote 
the general welfare by circulating songs that warm the 
public heart/' 

It was eminently characteristic of the poet to do 
things by extremes. In July and August, 1881, humor 
predominated in his editorials. "It has been sug- 
gested by our readers," he wrote, "that the Journal 
really ought to have its columns embellished with 
something sunny-like, not too much fun in it, you 
know, but just enough.'' 
\ As the humorist of the Journal, Riley sometimes dis- 

Vv guised himself as Mr. Trillpipe. In one issue Mr. 
Trillpipe paid his respects to that elder daughter of 
discomfort^ — Homesickness. "I Want to say right 
here," he wrote, "that of all diseases, afflictions or 
complaints, this thing of being homesick takes the 
cookies. A man may think when he has an aggra- 
vated case of jaundice, or white-swelling, or bone- 
erysipelas, that he is to be looked up to as a being 
quite well fixed in the line of trouble and unrest, but 
I want to tell you, when I want my sorrow blood- 
raw, you may give me homesickness — straight goods, 
you know — ^and I will get more clean legitimate agony 
out of that than you can out of either of the other at- 
tractions — or of all combined. You see, there is but 
one way of treating homesickness — and that is to get 
back home — ^but that is a remedy you can not get at 
a drug store at so much per box ! and if you could, and 
had only enough money to cover half the cost of a full 
box — and nothing but a full box ever reaches the case 
- — why, it follows that your condition remains critical. 
Homesickness shows no favors. She is just as liable 
to strike you as to strike me. High or low, rich or 



WITH THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL 75 

poor, all come under her jurisdiction, and whenever 
she once reaches for a citizen she gets there every 
time ! She does not confine herself to youth, nor make 
a specialty of little children. She stalks abroad like a 
census-taker, and is as conscientious. 

"I will never forget,'* continued Mr. Trillpipe, *'the 
last case of homesickness I had and the cure I took 
for it. It has not been more than a week ago, either. 
You see my old home is too many laps from this base 
to make it very often, and in consequence I had not 
been there for five years and better until this last trip, 
when I just succumbed to the pressure and threw up 
my hands and went. It was glorious to rack 'round 
the old town again, things looking about the same as 
they did when I was a boy, don't you know. Ran 
across an old schoolmate and took supper with him at 
his happy little home. Then we walked and talked. 
He took me all around, you understand, in the mellow 
twilight, as it were, till the first thing you know, 
there stood the old schoolhouse where v/e first learned 
to chew gum and play truant. Well, sir, you have no 
idea of my feelings. Why, I felt as if I could throw 
my arms around the dear old building till the cupola 
would just pop out of the top of the roof like the core 
of a carbuncle, don't you know — and I think if ever 
there was an epoch in my life when I could have 
tackled poetry without the sting of conscience, that 
was the time!" (The irony of this is more apparent 
when one recalls the poet's miseries over arithmetic 
in the old building.) 

Although appearances seemed to contradict it, the 
fact was that Riley did not detach himself from the 
home of his youth. For several years scarcely a fort- 



76 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

night passed without his return to Greenfield. He 
would "toil prodigiously" for a while and then sud- 
denly answer the call of a willow-whistle. He would 
leave a note on the editor^s desk: *'Here is a little 
lullaby song you may use for Sunday issue, if it pleases 
you, and a nonsense jingle, perhaps not worthy to use 
at all, but if not, preserve it, and I will get it when I 
return. Going down home for a day or two to smoke 
my segyar." 

"He would lose interest in the struggle," said the 
Jo2irnal editor, "and would stamp up and down our 
reportorial rooms moaning for the sight of sunflowers 
in the lane or a martin box in the garden, talking about 
the showers of sunshine on the fields and the restful 
lullabies of the rain." "We have been waiting so long," 
he wrote, in such a mood. 

"And so very homesick we have grown, 
The laughter of the world is like a moan 
In our tired hearing, and its song as vain, — 
We must get home — we must get home again!" 

Sometimes his stay would be overlong and the 
managing editor would have to hurry a post-card to 
Greenfield — "Proof is waiting; come on first train." 
Usually, however, the smiles of old friends would soon 
restore the poet's "lost youth" — and then "the desire 
to see his thoughts in cold type" promptly returned 
him to the Journal; back, he said, "to ask the boys 
how to spell a v/ord" ; back to the friends who would 
coddle his "ambition for a place in the world of let- 
ters." 



CHAPTER V 

SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 

RILEY received much wise counsel, not a little 
helpful criticism and a great deal of praise, 
out of which developed the resolve to cultivate 
his gift. 

He wisely did not put himself under an elocutionist, 
but he did conscientiously strive to perfect his style 
of delivery. The best school he thought was an audi- 
ence of men and women, and so he eagerly joined in 
amateur entertainments, aiding in commencement ex- 
ercises, church festivals and concerts. At Indianapolis 
he left off writing a poem, hurried to the First Bap- 
tist Church, and by request recited "The Tree Toad" 
and "The Object Lesson," at the end of a long musical 
program. 

Sometimes he would slip into a convention to dis- 
cover if he could the secret of some orator's power, 
often relate anecdotes and stories to his friends, and 
always vrhen the chance offered, study the accent and 
gestures of children. His friend, D. S. Alexander, 
then correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, wrote most 
happily of things the poet did and why he did them. 
It was a day in August, 1879 — 103 degrees in the 
shade, but not too hot for the poet "to perfect his 
style of delivery." He was in the woods on White 
River, eight or ten miles above the city. After high 
noon and boiled coffee, Riley rose before his little audi- 

77 



78 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ence — ^two newspaper correspondents and an inquisi- 
tive boy — and told "The Bear Story," and then gave 
'*a little dissertation on the peanut," which made his 
audience exceedingly noisy. 

"What will you do with this marvelous gift?" asked 
Alexander, as soon as he could control his laughter. 

"Cultivate it, I suppose," answered Riley. "Wish I 
could earn my living by it." 

"Riley's power of imitation," wrote the correspond- 
ent, "is certainly wonderful. Sothern in the Crushed 
Tragedian is not more happy than Riley in his imita- 
tion of Colonel Ingersoll, Schuyler Colfax, and other 
popular lecturers. He never heard Ingersoll but once, 
and yet he caught the salient points of his style. The 
tone of voice, the happy gesture, and the full round 
sentences, flushed with the imagery of poetry, are 
copied with an exactness that must delight even the 
famous orator himself." 

Riley took particular pride in his imitation of In- 
gersoll and was keenly disappointed when he realized 
that it was a failure. 

"While it is not my intention," Riley would say in 
introducing the imitation, "to descant upon the merits 
of Robert G. Ingersoll as an orator, or to express any 
opinion as to whether our peculiar views are in direct 
unison or not, I desire to preface the sketch I am about 
to offer, by the admission that his oratory, upon the 
one occasion that I listened to him held me as nearly 
spellbound, for two hours as, perhaps, the tongue of 
eloquence will ever hold me. And I will admit fur- 
ther that I did not attend his speech to listen in that 
way — ^but rather for the purpose of studying his ora- 
tory, and getting, if possible, an idea of the way he 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 79 

did it. I venture the assertion that his peculiar power 
will enable him to take up any subject — no matter how 
inviolate and incontrovertible in its fixed relations 
with the laws of fact, and discuss that subject to its 
seeming defamation. As an example, let us select a 
topic, 'Friendship,* for instance, and I think it will 
require no unusual stretch of fancy to imagine the 
great orator assaulting it." 

Then followed a volley in the style of IngersolFs 
assaults on creeds and the Bible. "What has Friend- 
ship ever done for man ?" Riley asked. "What ship of 
commerce has it ever launched upon the sea? What 
foreign shore has it ever set its foot upon but to crush 
it in the dust?" 

Notwithstanding the poet's efforts to improve it, the 
Ingersoll imitation was a failure. There was some- 
thing about it that even the orthodox church-member 
did not like. For similar reasons, "blue ribbon" soci- 
eties and baseball enthusiasts were displeased with an- 
other imitation, "Benson Out-Bensoned," although 
Riley did his utmost to conciliate them. "Before pro- 
ceeding with this number," said Riley to his audience, 
"I desire to call particular attention to the fact that it 
was written and published as a satire on a game the 
world has gone mad over. Containing for its central 
figure, a character who is prominent in the Temper- 
ance field, I would not have the imitation construed 
into a burlesque upon a theme of such moral impor- 
tance; much less reflect discredit upon a man whose 
genius has ever challenged the highest admiration. I 
refer to Luther Benson, a man whose hopeless misfor- 
tune can not sink him beyond the reach of my warm- 
est love and sympathy." 



80 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

After "trying" them for three years the imitations 
were retired. Throughout Indiana in those promising 
platform days, were friends who longed for the poet's 
success as they would for a personal triumph. They 
were heavy at heart whenever he did things beneath 
the higher levels of his genius, and had a happy way 
of communicating their criticisms to the Indianapolis 
Journal, One day there came a letter from Liberty, 
Indiana. "Last evening," wrote the correspondent, 
"J. W. Riley appeared before a Liberty audience for 
the second time within the last fortnight. His char- 
acterization is perfect. In the presence of his genius 
our illusion is complete, and in laughter and tears we 
accompany him in the rendition of his sketches and 
poems. There is but one criticism to be made on his 
entertainments, and that is the Benson and Ingersoll 
imitations, which he renders with such abandon. They 
are each well enough in their way, but they are typical 
of nothing worth preserving, and so far below the 
original freshness and purity of his own unique pro- 
ductions, that the contrast is painfully apparent. He 
would do well to eschew them forevermore." 

It was a center shot. "Forevermore," repeated Riley 
to a reporter. "No more mocking-bird business. Be 
that word our sign of parting." At a later period 
Riley remarked that he sat for a long while in the 
lourval office, grave, mute and lonely as the bust of 
Gutenberg — "but the imitations had to go." 

The year 1879 set at rest the question of Riley's 
ability as a public entertainer. Men slow to give 
judgment were confident he had qualities of genius 
that would eminently distinguish him on the plat- 
form. Terms for his entertainment were raised from 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 81 

fifteen dollars and expenses to twenty-five dollars. **I 
am simply compelled to ask a fair price/' he wrote a 
committee, "since it is through this means that I hope 
to gain a revenue sufficient to forward my literary 
studies." Hand-bills announced him ''the Poet Laure- 
ate of Indiana, — a feast of reason and a flow of soul," 
and here and there small committees began to share 
the Carlyle observation that a true poet, a man in 
whose heart resides some tone of the eternal melo- 
dies, is the most precious gift that can be bestowed 
upon a generation. Responsible citizens, having 
listened to the poet with pleasure, signed a paper for 
a return engagement. Fifty business and profes- 
sional men of Newcastle, having braved "the rain and 
slush of a dark night," sent such an invitation that 
Riley might have the opportunity to appear again un- 
der more favorable conditions. '^ 

In September he prepared a new lecture, though he 
did not want it called a lecture, that treated of poetry 
and character. "In the broadest sense, poetry, should 
I attempt to define it," said Riley in his new talk, "is 
a spiritual essence, whose flavor purifies and sweetens 
all our being, and makes us more and more like true 
men — just, and generous, and humane." 

Always there was praise of his favorite poet. "The 
happiest forms of poetic expression," he continued, 
"are cast in simplest phraseology. The student of 
poetic composition is not long in finding that the secret 
of enduring verse lies in spontaneity of expression, 
and the grace of pure simplicity. Longfellow has fur- 
nished many notable examples, first among which I 
class the poem, The Day Is Done.' It is like resting 
to read it. It is like bending with silent, uncovered 



82 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

head beneath the benediction of the stars. It is in- 
finitely sorrowful, and yet so humanely comforting, 
one can but breathe a blessing on the kindly heart 
from which is poured the 

'Feeling of sadness and longing, 
That is not akin to pain.' 

"The tribute of true praise," he went on, "may oft- 
times rest upon the vagrant verses of a singer all un- 
known to fame. Somewhere years ago I remember 
clipping from an obscure country paper, a little poem, 
which to me has always seemed a solitaire of rhythmi- 
cal excellence. It was an orphan, too, without a friend 
or relative in all the world to claim it, but I took the 
little gypsy home with me to love it always." (He did 
not then know that Mary Kyle Dallas is its author. 
But he told its happy name, "Brave Love," and re- 
cited it.) 

As he did so Riley's radiance of affection was such 
that his audience seemed to see and feel and touch 
and taste poetry. They saw it in the falling shadows 
of the dusk, they felt it in the unbroken silence of the 
night. They tasted it "in the wine of love that ripened 
in their hearts and rose to their eyelids in warm 
tears." 

Before going far into the lecture, Riley called atten- 
tion to "the fact that the nearer the approach to Na- 
ture, in language, expression and unobtrusive utter- 
ance, the higher the value of Character and Poetry." 
In illustration of this "simple fact," he submitted to 
his hearers two poems — "Farmer Whipple, Bachelor" 
and "An Old Sweetheart of Mine." The effect of the 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 83 

latter was magical — ^magical then, and always after- 
ward. 

Then came the poet's defense of dialect. There had 
been in educational circles opposition to its use, and 
in some quarters the objection had rankled with bitter- 
ness. "While it would seem that the very choicest 
specimens of our modem dialectic verse, such as pro- 
duced by Bret Harte, John Hay and others,*' said the 
lecturer, "are destined to survive the fleeting recogni- 
tion of the daily press, it becomes something of a prob- 
lem to the student why the dialectic poetry of Burns 
should yet be living on, as fresh and sweet to-day as 
when an age ago it cropped above the heather bells 
of Scotland in a bloom of song that filled the whole 
world with its fragrance. And while it remains a 
truth that the *Cantie blether o' the Hielands* affords 
a singularly musical and rich vernacular, I am in- 
clined to think that our own native dialect, with the 
exception, perhaps, of ungrammatical abandon, is 
scarcely the inferior of the Scotch, if we but pause 
to contemplate it with more seriousness, for in our 
hurried notice of it we catch nothing of its deeper 
worth; only its lighter attributes are visible. With 
our fickle knowledge of all its deeper worth and purity, 
it is little wonder that its mission is so often debased 
to serve the ends of the rhyming punsters and poetical 
thugs of our *Comic Weeklies,' until at last its stand- 
ing in the literary field may be likened more to the 
character of a lawless intruder than a dear, old- 
fashioned friend who comes to shake a hearty hand 
with us, and gossip of the good old days Vhen you and 
I were young.' The idea has become popular that the 
dialectic poem must necessarily be done in the slangiest 



84 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

phraseology, with copious suggestions of vulgarity, 
and ^milky-ways' of asterisks, which the reader is left 
to pepper out with his own choice of expletives. This 
is all wrong. The field of dialect is flowered over with 
the rarest growth of poesy, and its bloom is no less 
fragrant because it springs from loam, and flourishes 
among the weeds. However dialectic expression may 
have been abused, certain it is that in no expression 
is there better opportunity for the reproduction of 
pure nature. In artlessness of construction the dia- 
lectic poem may attain even higher excellence than the 
more polished specimens of English. Its great defect 
seems to be that, as written or printed, the real feel- 
ing it contains is overlooked by the reader in the con- 
templation of its oddity. That it is more widely copied 
by the press than any other type of versification, I am 
inclined to think, is the result of a superficial regard 
for its general abandon rather than a wholesome recog- 
nition of its real worth, which, though always more 
than half buried in the debris of rhetoric, is the more 
precious when unearthed. Hence it is that we are so 
tardy in admitting it has any worth whatever, much 
less its very superior worth of character and truth- 
fulness to life. In defense of it I would offer a poem 
entitled *01d-Fashioned Roses,' the language of an 
old-timer, who once took the trouble to explain to me 
his love of the flowers about his doorway." 

At one point, Carmel, Indiana, the poet lectured in 
a church, and friends observed that he seemed quite 
at home in the pulpit. The old-fashioned roses made 
an impression inexpressibly sweet. They were not 
gaudy ; there was no style about them, yet their owner, 
the old man, could not do without them : 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 85 

"He was happier in the posies, 
And the hollyhawks and sich, 
Than the hummin' bird 'at noses 
In the roses of the rich." 

"Observe," said the poet to his hearers, "how the flow- 
ers suggest to our old-time friend the good old- 
fashioned words, and that he can no more do without 
the words than he can do without the roses. Colleges 
may disown him but God does not. Poetry is purity," 
Riley affirmed, laying his hand reverently on the Bible. 
"Where purity abounds, poetry abounds. This Book of 
Books says the pure in heart shall see God. Our old 
man in the doorway was poetic because his heart was 
pure. He had the poetry of character, and will, I be- 
lieve, as certainly see God as the fishermen saw Him, 
who walked with Jesus by the Sea of Galilee." 

It was possible for "the rhyming punsters, by their 
lawless operations, to damage the dignity of the 
Hoosier idiom beyond recovery. As an instance of the 
tendency to degrade it, Riley offered next on the pro- 
gram "a rambling dissertation on the Tree Toad." 

Before leaving a theme which to him at least "had 
for a long time been a source of infinite interest and 
delight," he asked his audience "to bear with the nar-» 
ration of a story from real life — Tradin' Joe.* " 

When Riley, years before, recited the poem from 
the steps of the Wizard Oil wagon — ^to' tell it in his 
own words — "I thrust a hand in my pocket, and rum- 
pling with the other my hair to fluffiness, drew over 
my features a sly look of conceit and self-assurance, 
turned up the corners of my eyes and mouth, and re- 
cited the lines in a rasping yet not altogether un- 
melodious drawl." In the lecture Riley retained the 



86 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

drawl, but almost all the other features of the early 
rendition were omitted as being beneath the dignity 
of the platform. 

The opinion prevailed that, over and over again, in 
his selections, Riley characterized himself — ^for in- 
stance, in "Tradin' Joe," the poet was the fellow that 
folks call "slow"— 

"And I'll say jest here I'm kind o' queer 
Regardin' things *at I see and hear; 

Fer Fm thick o' hearin' sometimes, and 
It's hard to git me to understand; 

But other times it hain't, you bet! 
Fer I don't sleep with both eyes shet !" 

Always the audience was made aware, by quaint ac- 
cent, tone of voice and delicacy of gesture that the 
poet, though appearing inattentive, was nevertheless 
seeing everything with superior intelligence. 

After narrating the pathetic story of a German 
father in the poem "Dot Leedle Boy of Mine," Riley 
proceeded to "bring down the house" with a number 
that had been popular since the night he first read 
it in Lovett's parlor at Anderson. His hearers had 
been warned to "have their buttons well sewed on," 
if they did not want to lose them when they came to 
"The Object Lesson." "His triumph in the number," 
said Myron Reed, "was largely due to a secret laughter 
that tickled the poet's soul. He imitated a general 
type of the time, and that was the reason audiences 
never failed to recognize it. The Educator was not 
confined to out-of-the-way places, but was found in 
large cities as well. He was a picturesque donkey 
and none enjoyed his caricature more than the teach- 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 87 

ers. The humor did not require a long, psychological 
analysis with charts to explain it." 

Riley had first met the Educator at a county teach- 
ers* institute at Anderson, Indiana, but for obvious 
reasons he disguised the fact. "Barely a year ago," 
he said, introducing 'The Object Lesson," "I attended 
the Friday afternoon exercises of a country school. 
Among a host of visitors was a pale young man of 
thirty years, perhaps, with a tall head and bulging 
brow, and a highly intellectual pair of eyes and spec- 
tacles. He wore his hair without *roach' or 'part,' 
and his smile was *a joy forever.' He was an educa- 
tor — ^from the East, I think I heard it rumored — any- 
way when he was introduced to the school, at last, he 
bowed and smiled and beamed upon us and entertained 
us in the most delightfully edifying manner imagin- 
able. Although I may fail to reproduce the exact sub- 
stance of his remarks on that highly important occa- 
sion, I think I can at least present his theme in all its 
coherency of detail. Addressing particularly the pri- 
mary grade of the school, he said : 

" 'As the little exercise I am about to introduce is of 
recent origin, and the bright, intelligent faces of the 
pupils before me seem rife with eager and expectant 
interest, it will be well for me perhaps to offer by 
way of preparatory preface a few terse words of ex- 
planation. The Object Lesson — ^the Object Lesson is 
designed to fill a long-felt want, and is destined, as I 
think, to revolutionize in a great degree the educa- 
tional systems of our land. In my belief the Object 
Lesson will supply a want which I may safely say has 
heretofore left the most egregious and palpable traces 
of mental confusion and intellectual inadequacies 



88 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

stamped, as it were, upon the gleaming reasons of the 
most learned, the highest cultured, and most eminently 
gifted and promising of our professors and scientists 
both at home — and abroad/ " 

Such was the introduction and first paragraph of 
a recitation that required fifteen minutes in delivery. 
The "toplofty*' language, the utterly ridiculous relation 
of the ^'picturesque donkey" to the pupils, was ap- 
parent to the audience from the first. The Educator, 
bobbing up and down at intervals on his toes, his body 
"statuesque and straight as a candle," with his hands 
clasped in front as children do in making the "church 
steeple," his thumbs up and the index fingers pointing 
outward across the footlights, was a picture as un- 
forgetable as it was ridiculous and convulsing. 

The last number on the program was "The Bear 
Story." Always in telling it, memory went back along 
"the truant paths of childhood." "In all the bound- 
less range of character," said Riley, introducing the 
story, "there is no field so universally attractive, and 
at the same time so lightly dwelt upon, as that pre- 
sented by child-life. There is no phase of it but is 
filled to overflowing with the rarest interest. In the 
blossom-faces of the children the sunshine nestles in 
its fairest light, and in the ever-wondering eyes of 
baby-innocence we see reflected back the misty lotus- 
lands of every joy. And there is one characteristic 
of the child of five that I would reproduce. Every 
parent will remember with what rare delight he has 
marked the ever-varying features of the listening tod- 
dler at the knee as he hears recounted for the hun- 
dredth time the story of *Red Riding Hood' or 'Jack 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 89 

The Giant Killer' or the far-famed history of The 
Three Bears/ And every parent will remember, too, 
with what astonishment and pleasure he has listened 
in return to the crude attempts of the miniature ro- 
mancer, as the spirit of inventive genius first invests 
the youthful mind in the little home-made sketches of 
the wonderful that he weaves from his own fancy. 
Such a study I will endeavor to present, with scarcely 
an embellishment of my ov^n — for the language, as I 
give it, is almost word for word the original." 

In A Child-World, the story appears essentially 
as Riley told it back in 1879. Its success on the plat- 
form lay in the poet's power to transfigure "the babble 
of baby-lips'' and make it as dear to parents as the 
sunny lispings of their own young hopefuls. A sec- 
ond factor in its success was the poet's lively memory 
of it as when — a boy of twenty-two — he told the story 
by lantern light to a crowd of youngsters on a village 
street in Henry County. 

Riley made his first Indianapolis hit in March, 1879, 
in an entertainment by home artists at the Grand 
Opera House. His second appearance, October 16, 
popularly termed The Park Theater Benefit, deserves 
more liberal notice. 

The city's literary group had been interested in the 
"Greenfield Poet" from the time he began to con- 
tribute to the Journaly and it was out of this group 
that the first impulse for a public testimonial de- 
veloped, developed while the poet was still a resident 
of Greenfield. Business men interested themselves 
in it, among them General Daniel Macauley, whose 
love of the poet was genuine and deep-seated. "Riley 



90 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

is the greatest bard south of 54:40/' said he. The 
date for the ''Benefit" having been selected, the Gen- 
eral wrote Riley as follows : 

Water Works Company, 23 South Pennsylvania Street, 

Indianapolis, September 16, 1879. 
Dear Boy: 

Will at once secure the theatre and will give you 
particulars. You don't need one cent — don't think of 
it. We will do everything and if there is profit it is 
yours — if not it is ours. We esteem it a privilege and 
an honor, and if we mistake not our people will 
*'Boom" for you. The public is a capricious beast 
and may have some d — d fool engagement that night 
elsewhere, but we propose to give them an all-fired 
good chance to "come and see us/' You have no more 
care, nothing more to do with it but to come over and 
speak your piece and "collar the boodle" afterwards. 
We blow out in the Herald this week, and then fire all 
along the line. 

Your pard, 

Daniel Macauley. 

NEW PARK THEATER 

Thursday Evening, October 16 (1879) 

Complimentary Testimonial to 

MR. J. W. RILEY 

THE INDIANA POET 

Tendered by the citizens of Indianapolis 

An Evening of Original Character 

Sketches and Dialectic Readings 

was the "blow out" in the Herald, and from that 
moment the success of the "Benefit" was assured. 
Whatever General Macauley undertook for other 
people, it was said, always succeeded. As the time 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 91 

approached Riley mailed complimentary tickets to lit- 
erary friends — the "host of contributors" who the 
year past had united with him to make a name for 
themselves and the Kokomo Tribune. "The Little 
Man is to have a big house — the promise is most flat- 
tering," he wrote, "and my lecture (Poetry and Char- 
acter) I really think is one that you will approve." 
"Don't you dare to forget me," he wrote another. 
"Fe-fi-f o-f um ! You must come. Will have many lit- 
erary friends I want you to meet. Am humming 
like a telegraph pole. Chrlpkin aprrrrooommmm ! ! ! 
Yours gaspingly, J. W. R." 

"A week before," said Riley, "I went over to the 
city to stay till the lecture ; had to buy sleeve buttons, 
shoe strings, and have my justly celebrated complexion 
powdered." This was amusing enough when he said 
it, years after the lecture, but it was a tragic week of 
suspense. He was on the gridiron. If he made good 
in Indianapolis, he could make good throughout 
Indiana. 

"I am anxious for your success," wrote his young 
sister Mary from home. "With this, accept my kind- 
est wishes in a shower of flowers with peals of ap- 
plause and encores ringing in your ears." So the 
"Benefit" proved to be, notwithstanding counter-at- 
tractions, including a circus, a minstrel show, a rain- 
storm, and the enormous advance sale of seats for the 
brilliant young Mary Anderson in Evadne. 

The beautiful theater, according to the newspaper 
report, was well filled with a cultured and critical 
audience. The poet was introduced by General 
Macauley, who was extremely felicitous, not only in 
what he said but in his manner of saying it. He put 



,92 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the audience in the best of humor and broke the ice 
always present on occasions when one does not know 
just what is to come. "To me," the General said, ''has 
been assigned the duty of introducing Mr. Riley-— a 
duty which I perform with pride and pleasure. I ad- 
mit that from the remarkable surfeit of other attrac- 
tions in town this week, I began to fear it might be 
more economical to introduce the audience to Mr. 
Riley. Fortunately all is well in that direction. I 
am willing to allow, even in the gentleman's presence, 
that, being human, he must necessarily in some degree 
be sinful, but what atrocious thing he can have com- 
mitted to have had a whole circus thrown at him, is 
more than we can guess. I would say to Mr. Riley 
that we are proud of the efforts he is making, and the 
fame he is winning for himself and for us his neigh- 
bors, throughout our country. In our strongest terms 
of endearment and encouragement, we tell him to go 
forward as he has begun. The time will come, we 
fondly hope and believe — if his riper years fulfill the 
promise of his youth — ^when something akin to the 
Scotch pride in Burns shall be felt by us for him." 

When the evening seemed fairly under way, Riley 
made his bow and retired. The applause continuing. 
General Macauley came to the front with the remark 
that before the lecture Riley had asked him what he 
should talk about and he had answered, "about an 
hour." The hour was up. The demonstration con- 
tinuing, Riley appeared again, responding with a 
second child-sketch, and then the curtain fell for the 
night. 

The Indianapolis papers were most appreciative. 
The Sentinel was proud that the young state poet had 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 93 

done himself and the city mutual credit. With experi- 
ence and cultivation he could tread the boards along- 
side the foremost comedians of the time. The News 
was certain his fertility and exuberance of imagina- 
tion and his power of delineation would make him one 
of the first readers of America. 

There were two newspaper men whose praise was 
most desired, George Harding and Berry Sulgrove. 
*lf we gain those fellows," said General Macauley to 
the poet, *'we have gained all." They differed from 
each other in many ways, but both spoke the truth 
fearlessly. What would they say? "Some day," 
wrote Harding, **Riley will have a national fame, and 
it will be worth something to us to know that we 
appreciated the poet and attested our appreciation be- 
fore everybody else did." 

"Nothing succeeds like success," wrote Sulgrove in 
the Herald, "and Mr. Riley may take his first venture 
on the stage, or the platform, in this city, as an omen 
of a promising hereafter. Casting his horoscope to 
an hour on the dial of time two years hence, and then 
looking a couple of years down the course of events, 
he may see himself among the most attractive of pub^ 
lie lecturers. His fortune lies with himself now, and 
he will wrong his powers and his opportunities if he 
does not win it." 

After the "Benefit" both Harding and Sulgrove 
talked to Riley personally about his recitations. Hard- 
ing assured him that his perception of character was 
"as keen as that of our famous actors and more sensi- 
tive to delicate traits." 

Both friends advised the poet to weed out the didac- 
tic part of his lecture. It was irrelevant — a general 



94 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

dissertation on poetry was unnecessary. "You are 
not a critic ; you are a poet and an actor." Riley did 
not immediately follow the suggestion, but as he said, 
''came round to their peg two years later." 

The "Benefit" was truly a milestone. Thence for- 
ward Riley reached out over the state. One evening 
he "dropped down to Bloomington," he said, "to 
twitter to the students." So far as known, only one 
student was present, William Lowe Bryan, now presi- 
dent of the University. "I am not sure," writes the 
president, "that I heard Mr. Riley's first reading in 
Bloomington. I remember, however, hearing him 
read in the shabby little town hall when I was a 
student. My friend Henry Bates, the Shoemaker, 
asked me to go with him to hear the new poet. There 
were not above five and twenty persons present. I 
had heard nothing of Riley and had no high expecta- 
tions as to what I should hear. Never was a more 
overwhelming and joyful surprise — The Object Les- 
son,' 'The Bear Story,' and many more. A few years 
later we paid Mr. Riley five hundred dollars for essen- 
tially the same program. He was then already an 
artist on the stage as truly as was Joe Jefferson." 

Near the end of 1879 the "Bret Harte of Indiana" 
first advanced across the state line, and with that ven- 
ture he discovered his inability to board the right 
train ; reach his destination on time. "I don't remem- 
ber places," he once remarked: "Hold on, I do re- 
member one town, Rockville, Indiana, — and a tall, 
gaunt, flickering figure in the hallway. The figure 
had not come to tell me how I had played upon the 
heartstrings of my hearers. He came in the name of 



L'^v>V 




George C. Hitt, Publisher of the Poet's First Book 




Senator Harky S. New 
From a photograph taken while an officer in the Spanish-American War 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 95 

the laiu to levy on my door receipts for some fancied 
claim of five dollars." 

A week before the New Year, he made his bow to 
Illinois, "went over,'' as he said, "to impart an intel- 
lectual stimulus to the little town of Galva." Posters 
announced him as "John C. Walker,'' author of 
"Romancin' " and "Tom Johnson's Quit." Before 
making the hazardous journey he wrote Howard S. 
Taylor, then a resident of the place, asking for par- 
ticulars, when and how to start to Galva, "because," 
he said, "I am as blind as a bat on railroads. And 
right here let me tell you, get your umbrella. I never 
fail to bring a storm of some kind. I am a surer thing 
on rain than the tree-toad." 

Taylor knew the poet had no instinct for locality, 
and was therefore explicit. "Route and the time as 
follows — Fare ten dollars — change cars at Peoria — 
(a) Ask editar the Journal for a pass to Peoria — (&) 
Get on the L B. & W. train at Indianapolis at eleven 
o'clock at night ; take a chair and nap until about nine 
next morning, when your eyes will open in Peoria — (c) 
Get out at the depot and do not forget your satchel — 
(d) Buy a ticket to Galva — (e) Board the Peoria and 
Rock Island train — (/) Paste this in your hat lest you 
lose it and turn up in Pekin or somewhere else — (g) 
Have thou nothing to do with the peanut man or 
strangers on the road — (h) Wire me when you reach 
Peoria as the women want to crimp their hair." 

Some of his friends envied the poet as he went 
from town to town tasting the sweets of fame. "It 
was not so dismal," he wrote one of them later, "when 
I had to wait for trains in the daylight. I could go 



96 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

round to the music stores, take down a violin and tune 
it, and bring back across the years the sound of old 
melodies. But it was grinning a ghastly smile when 
I had to wait at night, or travel between county seats, 
on muddy roads, in a buggy. I recall a dreary mid- 
night at a little station down on the Old Jeff. Road. 
It was a raw cheerless night. The utter darkness of 
everything on the outside gave to the stranger a sense 
of blank desolation. Inside the waiting-room a 
boisterous fire was pulsing in a 'torpedo' stove which 
stood ankle-deep in a box of sawdust filled with cigar 
stubs and refuse tobacco. Outside the operator's win- 
dow the signal lantern was buffeted by the vindictive 
wind. Telegraph wires snored and snarled on the 
pole at the corner of the station. The lonely ticking 
of the instrument in the office was unbearable. It was 
a relief when a wild freight train went jarring by and 
I stood on the rainy platform and watched the red 
light of the caboose as it burned itself to ashes and 
was lost in the black embers of the night. About that 
time the Old Man of the Sea came along, making signs 
to me to carry him off on my back. No agent to tell 
you the train was four hours late. Wait there in 
those grim, hysterical conditions till three o'clock in 
the morning as I did, and perhaps it will not seem so 
unclassical in a poet to uncork a calabash, take a few 
potations and climb on the train three sheets in the 
wind." 

The lecture season of 1880-'81 brought such addi- 
tions to Riley's program as "Little Tommy Smith" and 
"The Champion Checker Player of Ameriky." It 
opened auspiciously one Tuesday evening at Dickson's 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 97 

Grand Opera House, Indianapolis. Later in the sea- 
son he made a rather extended tour through Northern 
Indiana, a tour that required for the first time, 
something a little larger than a satchel, a little 
smaller than a trunk. Baggage men called it a tele- 
scope. "In those bygone days," said Riley, '*I was 
showing in towns which can now be found only on 
county maps. I had a varied experience in school 
halls and skating rinks, and something to remember 
about country hotels. My first engagement was at 
Cambridge City. Having a vague impression that 
Cambridge and Dublin were twin towns, I got off at 
Dublin. I arrived just after the noon hour. The 
little sleepy village was taking its siesta. The hotel 
keeper's boy was at the station with a spring wagon, 
into which he loaded my telescope with other baggage 
and drove away. When I reached the hotel I found 
the baggage on the front porch and the landlord lean- 
ing back in an easy chair smoking a corn-cob pipe. I 
thought the hour had arrived for the lecturer on 
*Toetry and Character" to show a few signs of travel 
experience. I entered the office and a girl came out of 
the dining-room to show me where to register. Re- 
turning to the porch I said, *That telescope you see 
right over there is mine.' 

*' *A11 right,' says the landlord. 

" 1 want it taken to my room.' 

" 'All right,' repeated the landlord. 

" *How soon may I have it?' 

" 'Well, the boy's puttin' the horse up jest now, but 
soon as he gits back, he'll he'p you carry it up.' " 

Thus Riley began what he called a tour of the "re- 



98 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

mote provinces/' swinging round the arc to the Tippe- 
canoe Battle Ground, where the tour ended **in a little 
hall over a country store." 

Returning to the Journal office — ^the Alpha and 
Omega of those lecture wanderings — Riley found the 
''reportorial band'* as eager as ever to welcome him, 
and on that particular day, the droll Myron Reed was 
among them. "A fugacious tour," said Reed. *'Have 
you any home folks?" asked a reporter. "Know any- 
thing about your ancestors?" added Reed. *'0r the 
size of gate receipts by moonlight?" continued the re- 
porter. "Where did you come from?" all asked at 
once. 

"From the Battle Ground," returned Riley. "Big 
light ! Didn't see Tecumseh. He was away on a little 
tour of his own. The Prophet was there though, back 
in the rear, you know, where the generals always are 
while the fight is on. A farmer saved my telescope — 
brought it and its celebrated owner to the train in a 
buckboard." 

The lecture year he had just begun was far more 
prosperous than the preceding ones. Return engage- 
ments were the rule, Crawfordsville and Terre Haute 
demanding "three readings in one season." With all 
this he did not neglect his Journal duties. Writing 
Roselind E. Jones, he said, "I am crowded to the raw 
edge of distraction, and, if I don't die soon, am cer- 
tainly in for a hard fall and winter. You see, I lec- 
ture in the winter season, and if you can just imagine 
a leetle, weenty-teenty man, with no more dignity than 
I possess, trying to appear serious before 'applausive 
thousands,' you can perhaps arrive at some conclusion 



SUCCESS ON THE PLATFORM 99 

of the amount of preparation necessary in the produc- 
tion of such a pro-am. And that program I am now 
engaged upon, and slashing away at the swarms of 
other duties like a small boy in an adult hornet's nest." 



CHAPTER VI 

LITERARY DENS 

THE Hoosier Poet was a dreamer. Many thick- 
coming fancies **broke upon the idle seashore 
of his mind — dreams no mortal ever dared to 
dream before/' Sometimes those dreams were as full 
of fate as his songs were full of melody. Again they 
were visionary; at least they were so regarded by the 
god of this world. "If I had as much money as 
Carnegie," he once remarked, "I would restore the 
homes of great artists and poets. I would build the 
Anne Hathaway Cottage on a lake somewhere in Wis- 
consin, the Longfellow Homestead in Indiana, the 
Whittier Birthplace in some other state. Interesting 
indeed a great park would be if it contained the homes 
and literary dens of eminent authors — Abbotsford, 
and the majesty of Tennyson's estate at Farringford, 
and so on." 

Should any multi-millionaire of the future desire to 
restore the Riley literary dens, he would quite soon 
discover his attempt to be a sleeveless errand. 
Throughout his "Prolific Decade" and years before 
and after it, Riley had no fixed place of abode. Being 
a literary Bedouin, his study was where he pitched 
his tent— a solitary place if he could find it. "I hope 
it will be made clear to posterity," he said, "that I 
want to be let alone. One must have a nest in which 
his literary fledglings may grow feet and wings — 

100 



LITERARY DENS 101 

Mary Anderson a dramatic den, and Uncle Remus his 
mocking-bird's nest." 

In the first years of his literary ventures, Riley had 
a desk in his paint shop over a drug store in Green- 
field. He also occupied an old superstitious room in 
the Dunbar House. 

Another Greenfield den is recalled by the poet's 
early friend, A. W, Macy, first publisher of the poem, 
"Fame." "I found Riley in a dingy little law-office 
at the top of a rickety stairway," said the friend. 
"The office furniture consisted of an ancient roll-top 
desk, two feeble-minded chairs, and a window-shade 
that served as a sieve for the sunshine. A few empty 
law books reposed at various angles on top of the desk. 
Within easy reach was a good supply of scratch paper 
and a sharp-pointed pencil. With the rosy enthusi- 
asm and the abounding hopefulness of youth, we 
plunged into our old-time favorite subjects, language 
and literature — ^he doing most of the talking. For- 
gotten were our sordid surroundings. We were in a 
palace with fine, rare spirits all about us. Some won- 
derful castles were erected that afternoon, and not all 
of them, as it proved, were made of air." And a won- 
derful poem, "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," Macy 
might have added, first saw the light in that law-office. 

In Indianapolis, prior to his moving permanently 
into Lockerbie Street, Riley occupied rooms in board- 
ing-houses and old hotels. 

There were three workshops however, which were 
in a class to themselves. In these the poet accom- 
plished wonders, wrote almost all the poems and 
stories that brought him distinction on the Indian- 
apolis Journal and the weekly papers. First and 



102 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

most interesting as well as the most gruesome, was 
"The Morgue/' on the shady side of Main Street, 
Greenfield — now, strange to relate, occupied by an 
undertaker. Its name was accidental. Writing Riley 
concerning the 'Whittleford Letters," from her liter- 
ary den (^'Castle Thunder") Mrs. Catherwood in- 
formed him that the Muse had deserted her. Her 
ship v/as becalmed — nothing left but just the dull 
pressure of inertia. Riley's reply was equally despond- 
ent ; day and night tears had been his food : 

The Morgue, May 22, 1879. 
Dear Mither: 

The cold and pulseless fact remains unalterable. 
Think of it ! I'm in debt to everj^ living human being 
within range — penniless in a manner, 'Varned out" 
to work the roads, and yet in one week's time have 
been compelled by a pitiless state of affairs (I won't 
lay it on Providence this time) to forego four separate 
and distinct engagements that would put money in my 
purse. And now what's a fellow to do? Echo howls, 
''To do!" — and that's about the sighs of it. I can 
only writhe in prayer. Don't think any one does me 
injustice in not rewarding my labors with a more 
lavish hand. That's not it. It's — but I can't swear 
or I'd teil you; but I do hope this letter will find you 
in a more patient frame of mind than is now the 
eclipsed dower of 

Yours, Fate & Co., 

J. W. Riley. 
P.S. And my mortal mind engages 

That no Spider on the pages 

Of the history of ages 

Ever smole as grim a smile! 

At the time, Riley was receiving letters from a 



LITERARY DENS 103 

friend in Illinois, who called his place of banishment, 
'Tatmos," and who would have Indiana writers know 
that others were denied the pleasures of society. In 
derision Riley called his palace of seclusion, "The 
Morgue'* — at first just the temporary play of fancy, 
but later retained for general use. Often he wrote 
from *'The Morgue" as if he were a creature of com- 
fort living in clover. Again Fate compelled him to 
summon the solemn midnight to do its work of woe. 

The second of the three workshops was Room 22 of 
the old Vinton Block, corner of Pennsylvania and 
Market Streets, Indianapolis. To this he repaired 
soon after beginning work on the Journal, "first," he 
said, "because it was near the 'Journal Works,' and 
second, because the rent was only five dollars a 
month." After occupying it for a while he began to 
call it the "Hut of Refuge," the "old rookery" becom- 
ing in time a gathering spot for played-out actors, 
"those coyotes and wildcats of the night," said Riley, 
"who escape their own loneliness by afflicting others 
with their com.pany." They were interesting for a 
while but by and by became a nuisance. "It's a peril- 
ously thin veil," he remarked, "between being good 
company and a bore." 

There came times when the mandates of the Muse 
were imperial. The poet was called to his task, as 
Thor^au phrases it, by the winds of heaven and his 
good genius, as truly as the preacher was called to 
preach. At such times callers were barred from the 
"Refuge," there being admission to no one, save the 
poet's physician, "whose footfall," Riley said, "I would 
know if I heard it on the grass above my grave." 



104 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Importunate visitors had to trust to the chance of am- 
bushing the poet at the side door of the Journal office. 
The ^'Refuge" was inaccessible: 

*The door was locked and the key 
Was safely hid in a hollow tree." 

There were employees on the Journal, who had not 
the vaguest idea of that den in the Vinton Block. It 
pleased Riley to veil it in mystery, something like the 
Wemmick of fiction, who at the close of the day retired 
to his little wooden cottage with the narrow chasm 
around it; as much as to say. When I go to the office 
I leave my den behind me, and when I go to my den 
I leave my office behind me. At night, as Wemmick 
did, Riley hoisted the bridge that crossed the chasm 
and thus cut off communication. 

The literary name of the "Refuge" was the **Dead 
Rose," — sub rosa, behind the scenes, in a whisper, 
secrecy, silence. It pleased Riley to say dead silence 
— ^the "Dead Rose." In the palmy days of the Metro- 
politan Theater, the old Vinton rooms had been occu- 
pied by a theatrical troupe. The "Dead Rose" was 
hung with theatrical trophies. There were litho- 
graphs of famous actors on the walls. He did not re- 
move them, made no change except to place a little 
terra cotta bust of Dickens on a dusty bracket above 
his table. His physician. Doctor Franklin W. Hays, 
who shared the room with him at sundry times, 
thought the poet should have beside Dickens a bust of 
Harpocrates, the god of silence and prophetic dreams. 
"Back to Gad's Hill," said Riley, "is far enough — ^no 
ancient memorials." Late at night the lithographs 
beamed "softly on the poet with warm surprise." As 



LITERARY DENS 105 

he stared at them dreamily he was carried back to his 
own dramatic days and his success in The Chimney 
Corner. Journal reporters remembered his reproduc- 
ing" the dying figure of Grandfather Whitehead with 
telling effect. 

A third workshop was the "Crow's Nest," a little 
square room under the cupola of the Seminary Home- 
stead, Greenfield, the quaint old structure in which the 
poet's father lived after his second marriage. Those 
were palmy days for the poet, up near the cupola — 

"Wretched was he sometimes, 
Pinched and harassed with vain desires; 
But thicker than clover sprung the rhymes 
As he dwelt like a sparrow among the spires." 

The name, "Crow's Nest," had been suggested by the 
box or perch of that name in the top rigging of Green- 
land galleys, built for the man on the lookout for 
whales. The room was fitted up soon after the poet 
moved to Indianapolis and for years was a retreat 
when he sought refuge from the torture of the city. 
"Going to Greenfield to look out for whales," he would 
say to his physician, meaning his purpose to lodge in 
the "Crow's Nest" and keep a sharp eye out for "a 
tall, majestic poem." 

One night in December he wrote a few lines about 
the "Nest": 

"A little, dingy, dusty room, 
As close and musty as a tomb, 
With one blank window curtained o'er 
With dust and dirt and nothing more. 
Where round the outer side the day 
Hangs vagrant-like, and skulks away, 



106 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

And leaves the crescent moon in vain 
Tiptoeing at the topmost pane. 
A room, like some deserted nest, 
High-clinging underneath the eaves, 
Where winter winds are surliest. 
And where the Old Year, dying, weaves 
The first fold of his snowy shroud 
And wraps it round him like a cloud." 

Within the ^'deserted nest'' is a lonely lamp — "a 
feeble, sallow, sickly, weird and ghastly flame" of 
diluted light 

"Upon the pallid, upturned face 
Of one — ^the genius of the place— 
Whose duty is to write and write, 
Nor rest him either day or night; 
Whose duty is to write, erase. 
And write again, and underscore, 
Review his work, and cull it o'er. 
And write again, and pause, efface, 
And scratch his head for something more 
To write about, until, as now, 
His pen is idle as a vow." 

Suggestions along the way pointed to the impor- 
tance of seclusion. One came from Mark Twain, a 
scrap of advice to young writers, which Riley clipped 
from a newspaper. A writer, according to Twain, 
should work three months on a stretch, dead to every- 
thing but his work; then loaf diligently three months 
and go at it again. Solitary imprisonment by com- 
pulsion was the one perfect condition for perfect per- 
formance. No letters, no telegrams, no bores, no re- 
sponsibilities, no gadding about, no seductive pleasures 
beckoning one way and dividing his mind. 



LITERARY DENS 107 

Riley listened kindly to Twain, but soon learned by 
experience that he could not work by rule. Not three 
months at a stretch but about three weeks was his 
limit. "There is my old friend, Dickens," Riley would 
say, "breakfasting at eight o'clock, after breakfast, 
answering letters, then writing until one o'clock, then 
lunch, then walk twelve miles, then dine at six, and 
pass the evening with friends; next day, same pro- 
gram ; I don't see how he did it." 

An occasion for surprise and sometimes concern 
among friends was the poet's going so long in his den 
without refreshments. He would steal away from the 
"Dead Rose" at night to the alley restaurant — ^the 
patch of light in the gloom back of the Journal Build- 
ing — and no one would see him till he came again for 
his lunch the next midnight. A few night owls only 
knew where to find him. "In Greenfield," said the 
poet, "I emerged from *The Morgue' after midnight 
to babble with the brook that curled through the town, 
or, when so inclined, I wormed my way to the Brandy- 
wine woods, where the whippoorwills paused in their 
call, and the katydids hid away from the smile of the 
moon. In the daytime I sometimes walked forth when 
there was no outdoor gaiety provided but the lazy 
drizzle of the rain. I had a hunger, but it was not 
hunger for bread." 

Only those who peeped behind the curtain knew 
when Riley partook of food. His habit of secrecy, ac- 
cording to Greenfield companions, was a subject for 
daily inquiry. "The poet was a kind of caliph," said 
one ; "he dwelt apart ; he did not promote explanations. 
*The Morgue' concealed him from the prying eyes of 
public curiosity. Sometimes we would ask him to 



108 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

walk with us. *No time/ he would reply ; *have to stay- 
here and sew my shroud/ whatever that meant. *If 
they ask you anything about me, tell them you don't 
know.' Daily he was summoned to his task — and be- 
lieve me, he worked. Often he wrote till daylight, 
wrote till his fingers were like ice and his brow like 
fire. There was no yardstick for his enthusiasm when 
hinged to a poem. His young existence leaped like a 
hillside torrent. Talk about his lack of resolution! 
When he was anchored to his table you could no more 
move him than you could move a mountain." 

Yet the poet longed for friendship as seen in his 
plaint to H. S. Taylor: 

The Morgue, September 4, 1879. 
Dear Taylor: 

There's been a two-weeks' kink in my usually pro- 
lific fancy and I can't get past it. Wish I could see 
you and get lulled again. Tell you what I need — 
genial companionship. But I am clearly out of gun- 
shot of it here. It is getting awful. People all stop 
talking as I pass along the street and stare at me 
like a "sum" in compound interest. Can't get me 
fixed — ^nor I them, but it is just naturally pulling me 
down and shutting me up like a Chinese lantern, or a 
concertina, that's better, and squeezing all the music 
out of me. I have been trying to rest, but do not be- 
lieve I am doing it. Write soon and let me know all 
you are dreaming and doing for the future. 

Your friend, 

J. W. R. 

"A man with imagination/' said Riley, recalling his 
experience in desolate rooms, '*can be supremely happy 
behind the bars of a jail. Leigh Hunt was such a 



LITERARY DENS 109 

man. Indeed a sparsely furnished room is prefer- 
able. I remember watching Kipling write one day in 
New York. I found him at work at a little table. His 
room was rather mean-looking. He was drawing a 
picture of a ship on a piece of blotting paper. He 
was just like an overgrown boy. That is the way he 
worked — one minute playing, the next, writing lines 
that smacked of genius." 

A correspondent to the Yankee Blade was certain 
Tennyson could write a good poem on a pine table in 
the kitchen, and that Whitcomb Riley could write one 
on the cars. This was a guess, yet it was true that 
Riley had written poetry on the train between Indi- 
anapolis and Greenfield, so that friends referred to the 
Pennsylvania Accommodation as one of his literary 
dens. Frequently he warned the brakeman to set him 
off at Greenfield. Writing thus irregularly on trains 
led some critics to account, as they thought, for im- 
perfections in his verse. It was really not his way to 
write so much, as to think out poems on trains or 
while walking the streets. When the time came, 
whether it rained, snowed or shone, he recorded them 
regardless of surroundings — at an office desk in the 
hum of business, in the waiting-room of a station, on 
the corner of an editor's table, or seated on a bench 
with a writing pad on his knee — it was all the same 
to him. Often he was insensible to surroundings. 

There is a glimpse of Riley in his Greenfield den, his 
"old catafalque," as he termed it, in his "Tale of a 
Spider," the story which was begun in "The Morgue" 
and finished in the "Dead Rose." He seems to have 
feasted and fattened on the gloom. "The greater por- 



110 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

tion of my time/' he writes, "I occupy in strict seclu- 
sion, here at my desk — for only when alone can I 
conscientiously indulge certain propensities of think- 
ing aloud, talking to myself, leaping from my chair 
occasionally to dance a new thought round the room, 
or to take it in my arms, and hug and love it as I 
would a great fat, laughing baby with a bunch of 
jingling keys. 

*'Then there are times too when worn with work, 
and I find my pen dabbling by the wayside in sluggish 
blots of ink, that I delight to take up the old guitar 
which leans here in the corner, and twang among the 
waltzes that I used to know, or lift a most unlovely 
voice in half-forgotten songs whose withered notes of 
melody fall on me like dead leaves, but whose crisp 
rustling still has power to waken from *the dusty crypt 
of darkened forms and faces' the glad convivial spirits 
that once thronged about me in my wayward past, and 
made my young life one long peal of empty merri- 
ment." 

"Hope you will like this piece of metrical abandon," 
Riley would remark or write to friends; "just copied 
it from first draft. It swept through The Morgue' 
last night as I sat coaxing Fate for something sor- 
rowful. Rare old jade! She knows best what we 
need. God bless her!" 

Years after his gloom in it, Riley left a memory of 
"The Morgue," a weird, unaccountable effusion 
(quoted in part), in which he feigns himself a 
madman vibrating between deterioration and trans- 
ports of insanity ; soothed on the one hand by friends 
and visions of light, and on the other, welcoming the 
joy and delirium of destruction — 



LITERARY DENS 111 

"Your letter was almost as dear to me 
As my lost mother used to be !" — 
(This is the way he wrote — and died 
Not understanding but satisfied.) 

"Day by day from the window here 
I stare out where the June is drear, 
Out where the leaves on the gladdest trees 
Are only trembling with agonies. 

"And all is rainy in spite of the sun ; 
But the uppermost ache of my life is done, 
And I am as glad as a moth that flies 
Into a great white flame and dies." 

In the main, however, the warmth of his heart 
enabled the poet to hallow his misfortune as Leigh 
Hunt had done in the jail. As he sang afterward in 
"A Poor Man's Wealth," he had "the opulence of 
poverty." What a "wealth of silence and hope, of 
ideals unrealized and energies as yet unillumined," he 
wrote in a fragment one midnight: 

"What poverty like this! to laugh and sing. 

And babble like a brook in summertime — 
To circle round the world on airy wing. 

Or clamber into heaven on rounds of rhyme, 
When in the soul benignly lingering, 
There lives a love unspeakably sublime." 

The sorrowful was not the rule, although "The 
Morgue" was dismal. Usually he coaxed the joyxms 
from Fate — exquisite music, the fruit of "an inward 
light that smote the eyes of his soul." Glad was the 
poet — and the night knew why. 

Since Riley was a poet, a human, Cupid stole into 
his literary dens. The little god had a way of shoot- 



112 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ing arrows to lady artists and writers of other states. 
One of his arrows reached Ella Wheeler (since famous^ 
ly loved as Eller Wheeler Wilcox). She had been 
cheered to the echo by an immense throng in Madi- 
son, Wisconsin, where she had read a poem at the re- 
union of the Army of the Tennessee. Generals Sheri- 
dan and Sherman had listened to it, both had heartily 
participated in the demonstration, and the latter had 
praised the country girl for writing it. Each year 
after reading the account of her literary debut, Riley 
became more interested in her. In February, 1880, he 
began a correspondence. "For years," he wrote, "I 
have been wanting to find you that I might tell you 
how much I like your writings — ^both prose and verse. 
I remember an odd sketch of yours, which warmed me 
through and through with delight. I read it to my 
literary friends, till we all in fancy gathered you in 
and made you one of us. Your poems I like best of 
all you do, and I am writing now to thank you for 
them, and for all the great good you are doing for the 
world — for everybody loves you, and God I know will 
make you very glad." 

Replying in May from her literary den. Miss 
Wheeler was not certain that she had the gift of song, 
"If I have," she wrote, "I am chosen of the gods, even 
as you are, and we go vnth them — ^you and I — up into 
the mountain tops and down into the deep valleys. I 
thank Heaven every time I suffer and I bow my head 
with reverence every time I am joyous, because I 
know what it all means. My thankfulness is un- 
utterable. I take all that is sent me, knowing noth- 
ing can come to me that is not sent by my friends, the 
gods, who know me and love me as their own." 



LITERARY DENS 113 

In June Riley was with Myron Reed on a hunting 
trip in Wisconsin and one day called on Miss Wheeler 
in Milwaukee. The call was a disappointment, par- 
ticularly to Miss Wheeler. On his return to Indian- 
apolis, he promptly wrote her from the ''Dead Rose." 
"I am here," the letter began, "at my desk in my old 
room. What is it that thrills me more — in this blank 
glare of day with all the air choked up with dust and 
heat, and no green thing in sight — ^but just the sullen 
face that glares back at me from the broken toilet 
glass bungled away here in the corner of my room. 
Wish I could shut off this thinking business for a 
while. I shut you clean away from me last night — I 
would not let you even look over my shoulder as I wrote 
— and wrote — and wrote. It was a long poem for me 
to write, because of late I have been writing just the 
shortest things ; and this is over two hundred lines in 
length — ^but she has the blood in her, in every syllable." 

The long poem was the "South Wind and the Sun," 
which, after a "process of refinement and purifica- 
tion," and the elimination of three stanzas, he pub^ 
lished the next year in the Journal, Eminent authors 
agree with him, that it has blood in every syllable. 

In July, after spending two weeks in Greenfield, he 
wrote Miss Wheeler again. "I have been endeavor- 
ing," he said, "to convince myself that old scenes, 
and all that flummery was happiness ; but it would not 
work. I browsed industriously and dipped in old 
affairs that used to thrill, and raked away among the 
embers of old loves — not many, still enough to plural- 
ize — ^but it was ghastly business at the best, and not 
one wounded sunbeam of pure joy to comfort me for 
all my pains. Fact is, the happy past (old love- 



114 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

affairs) is just a juiceless pulp. I am back here now 
in the city, thank God, where work holds out to me 
wide-open arms, and welcomes me, and wants me all 
the time." 

Then followed a copy from the first draft of his 
loved poem, "A Life-Lesson," which soon took its place 
in the Journal. Its plaintive line, "There! little girl, 
don't cry!" — the thread of gold the Muse had saved 
for the poem — was his own remark to a little girl 
who had broken her doll on the stone steps of a resi- 
dence in Anderson. 

In another letter the poet hungered for woman's 
companionship. He was brimmed with an alpine reso- 
lution, and the blazing desire to make his purpose an 
accomplished fact. *1 am mad and famished," he 
wrote. "It all seems so strange. I have such brief 
interludes in which to be my real self — or selves. I 
work so like a steel automaton; tireless, uncompromis- 
ing, cold, but with such a sure-and-certain sort of 
crank at every step, that if I don't just break and fly 
to pieces some day — I am certain of success, that's all." 

Later there were hints in Miss Wheeler's letters of 
the "waning strength of her regard." She set Riley 
speculating as to the cause. Love seemed to be "a 
fickle thing. Then envelopes began to reach me," said 
he, "with blue steam escaping from the unsoldered 
corners of the lapels. Soon my visions of matrimony 
vanished like chickens when the mother hen sees a 
hawk's shadow — and I resolved to die unmarried, un- 
wept and unsung." 

Miss Wheeler had grave fears that she would not 
survive an unhappy marriage. The marriage of two 
poets would be unhappy. The Brownings had been 



LITERARY DENS 115 

happy, but the list was altogether too small for sweet 
anticipations. **My first and only encounter with the 
Hoosier Poet/* she said years after meeting him, "was 
like that of a canine and a feline. Mr. Riley barked 
in a way which caused my feline back to rise, and in- 
stead of calling him by his given name I hissed. I 
wore a new gown, a fashionable dress, and my hair 
was arranged in the fashion of the day. He began at 
once to criticize, and was much disappointed in my 
'frivolous appearance/ I praised dancing. He thought 
poets should be above such things. My first sight of 
him shocked me. He was very blond — and very ugly. 
I was never attracted to blond men. His whole per- 
sonality was most disappointing. After his return to 
Indianapolis, we continued to correspond for a while, 
but at last he wrote two disagreeable letters, and I 
promptly returned his with the request that he return 
mine. I made it clear that I did not want posterity to 
know that I had wasted so much time on an impossi- 
ble person." 

Prior to Riley's correspondence with Miss Wheeler, 
Cupid had penetrated the obscurity of "The Morgue" 
— not an enchanting scene surely; nevertheless the 
mischievous son of Venus paid the retreat a visit. 
Miss Louise Bottsford, a young woman of Hoosier 
birth and training, had been suflSciently literary in 
her development to merit the attention of eastern pub- 
lications. She also had been helpful to Riley in the 
revision of his verse. Like Riley, she had lived in 
childhood in a log cabin, and its walls had echoed the 
charms of many a fairy tale. There had been a strug- 
gle and poverty, and then sunshine and song had brok- 
en upon it. Three poems — "Shadowland," "Satisfied" 



116 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

and '^Darkness/' had, in Riley's opinion, "richly 
merited the wide circulation they attained/' There 
was a warmth of simplicity in them which he prized, 
and "a dashing flow of merriment and quaint humor 
in her prose." 

Thus a love and correspondence began, doomed to 
an unhappy ending, as were all his courtships. His 
''Golden Girl," the discerning reader will see, was a 
composite of many girls, who doubtless would have 
made him a lovely wife, had she ever existed, and it 
had been his fortune to meet her. 

In after years Riley joked a great deal about his 
experience in the "Dead Rose." "Fortune," he once 
remarked, "stepped gingerly around the corner of Mar- 
ket Street, climbed the stairs, and emptied her cornu- 
copia at my door. I smiled at the contents. The bust 
of Dickens laughed hilariously. And what do you 
suppose the cornucopia contained? — a bill for room 
rent nineteen days overdue — some worm candy — a 
bottle of Townsend's Magic Oil — a bachelor button — 
and the thread of gold for a poem, 'My First Spec- 
tacles.' " 

In the city as in Greenfield, Riley continued his work 
in what the world terms uncongenial surroundings — 
and sometimes he thought they were uncongenial. "My 
poem, 'A Sleeping Beauty,' " he said, "was an inspira- 
tion. It was written in the grand old woods, — ^that is, 
in the grand old edge of the woods near the Starch 
Mills, where the atmosphere was so balmy the poet 
had to wear a muzzle to properly appreciate it. My 
limpid fancy tripped and trilled along as airily as 
Pogue's Run." After a two-weeks' illness, while re- 
cuperating in Greenfield, he wrote "Nothin' To Say" 



LITERARY DENS 117 

one afternoon while sitting by an old hall table in the 
Seminary Homestead. Another time, he began writing 
"Little Orphant Annie" at the dinner table, and when 
the cook came to remove the cups and saucers and 
"brush the crumbs away," he climbed to the "Crow's 
Nest" and there finished what Time seems to be say- 
ing is the most popular poem for children ever writ- 
ten. 

Within three years Riley wrote more than three 
hundred poems, most of them in the "Dead Rose" and 
"Crow's Nest" — such popular ones as "A Scrawl," 
"Away," "The Clover," "The Brook-Song," "Some- 
day," "The Days Gone By" and "The Orchard Lands 
of Long Ago." Before he wrote these, there was one 
entitled "His Room," which, although written in "The 
Morgue," pertained particularly to the "Crow's Nest," 
except, he said, that there were no ivy leaves nor vio- 
lets, nor any woven charms in the carpet. Home again 
from Hoosier lecture trips, from towns where he had 
stood "in festal halls a favored guest," his affection 
for the quietude of his den found expression in verse — 

"Here I am happy, and would fain 

Forget the world and all its woes; 
So set me to my tasks again. 

Old Room, and lull me to repose: 
And as we glide adown the tide 

Of dreams, forever side by side, 
I'll hold your hands as lovers do 

Their sweethearts' and talk love to you." 



CHAPTER VII 

WAITING FOR THE MORNING 

IT was many a lonesome mile Whitcomb Riley 
traveled before he was admitted to the magazines, 
a long while before the papers emphasized his im- 
portance with two columns on the first page. In 1878 
he began to send manuscripts to the Atlantic, but 
twenty years elapsed before he saw "The Sermon 
of the Rose," his first poem in that monthly. Al- 
though there were sleepless nights and "the drip and 
blur of tears,'' and sometimes a fierce defiance, and 
once, as he expressed it, "the instinctive desire to give 
battle in the savage way of the cave dwellers," yet 
in his calm moments he accepted all philosophically, 
and sometimes with fervid welcome, believing as h^ 
wrote in the poem, that "whatever befalls us is divine^ 
ly meant." It was a long, long trail into the land of 
his Dreams, and yet what transport was his when the 
luring afterwhiles enveloped him with their smile 



"How sweet the sunlight on the garden wall. 
And how sweet the sweet earth after the rain." 

"He has seen the tearful words respectfully de- 
clined," said Myron Reed, "and I have grieved with 
him over those words in days when there was no flour- 
ish of trumpets. But finally, by way of Wide-Awake^ 
St Nicholas, and the backdoor bric-a-brac of the Cen- 
tury, he found himself inside." 

118 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 119 

Of a truth Riley had seen the rejection slip. He sel- 
dom heard the moan of a turtle dove without remark- 
ing, "Its tone is heartbreaking; it must have had a 
manuscript declined." For ten years, beginning with 
1876, he was tenfold more familiar with "respectfully 
declined'' than the desired "accepted"; and it was 
proof of his genius that he could play with the dis- 
heartening phrase and then smilingly toss it aside, as 
seen in one of his "Kickshaws" in the Kokomo Trib- 
une: 

"I asked my tailor for a suit; 
I told him I designed 
To pay him in a month or less — < 
He respectfully declined. 

**I asked my love to the opera, 

But beauty and song combined 
Had not the power to tempt her — 
She respectfully declined. 

"I offered her my heart and hand, 
I told her I would bind 
The bargain with a cottage — 
She respectfully declined. 

"I sought relief in poetry 

And felt somewhat resigned. 

But the editor could not see it — * 

'Twas respectfully declined. 

"He told me he had old machines 
And low-priced boys to grind 
Out better poems than he marked — 
^Respectfully declined.' 



120 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"Oft in dreams I see the Devil 
In a cloud of fire enshrined 
As he grasps my card and marks it — 
'Respectfully declined/ 

"Then I wander till I reach the gate 
Of Heaven (in my mind) ; 
Saint Peter on my photo v^rites — 
'Respectfully declined/ 

"Saint Peter was an editor, 
Leastwise he seemed to find 
It very natural to write — 
'Respectfully declined/ '' 

A young writer once came a long distance to con- 
sult Riley on the prospects of recognition. His manu- 
scripts had been regularly returned and consequently 
he was * 'heartbroken," he said, ''the most miserable 
wretch alive/' 

"How long have you been trying?" asked Riley. 

"Three years," was the answer. 

"My dear man," said Riley, "keep on trying; try 
as many years as I did." 

"As you did !" exclaimed the young man ; **you strug- 
gle for years!'* 

"Yes, sir, and I remember two years that were just 
protuberant with hopeless days. I had the longest 
face between Toronto and Tehauntepec. I tried one 
magazine twenty years — back came my poems eter- 
nally. I kept on. I will break into your sanctum sanc- 
torum, I said, if I have to prorogue Parliament. I 
was not a believer in the theory that one man does 
his work easily because the gods favor him while an- 
other man has to shift, stumble and hobble along with- 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 121 

out them. I had the conviction that continuous, un- 
flagging persistence and determination win. If you 
are discouraged in three years it is not a hopeful sign." 
At the end of twenty years Riley was testifying to 
the truth of what he wrote in "Wait/' without know- 
ing why he wrote it, back in those inglorious days in 
"The Morgue"— 

"We know, faltering heart, 
Thy need is great: 
But weary is the way that leads to art, 
And all who journey there must bear their part — 
Must bear their part, and — wait. 

"And though with failing sight 
You see the gate 
Of Promise locked and barred, with swarthy Night 
Guarding the golden keys of morning-light, — 
Press bravely on — and wait." 

While he berated the magazines and at times ex- 
pressed his impatience in violent terms, Riley never 
held that poets were made for them. The reverse was 
the truth — ^the magazines for the poet. Subsequently 
a story was circulated that one of the standard maga- 
zines, seeing that Riley would one day be famous, had 
accepted one of his poems, paid ten dollars for it and 
kept it in a vault years before publishing it. The cir- 
cumstances provoked Eugene Field to ask whether any 
American magazine had ever discovered a poet, and 
whether any magazine had ever taken up a worthy 
poet until his reputation had been established by the 
newspapers. 

Field, according to Riley, had mistaken the province 
of the magazine. The newspapers had indeed estab- 



122 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

lished Riley's reputation. But that was not enough. 
It was up to him to receive improvement from the 
magazines. He would therefore *'whet his sickle and 
sail in." Perhaps a little more pruning was neces- 
sary. The magazines would know about that. For a 
long while he considered his relation to the magazine 
one of education. He was resolved not to be offended 
at honest criticism. *'If you do not like my poem/' he 
wrote an editor, "just say so. You can not hurt me 
by finding fault with it. If what you say does not 
agree with my opinion, I will keep the poem and love 
it just the same; and if your opinion is better, I shall 
not hesitate to cast mine overboard." 

Scarcely had the curtain risen on his magazine ven- 
tures when he was confronted with the intolerance of 
one section of his country for another. Captain W. R. 
Myers is authority for an interesting "speech" on the 
subject, which Riley made one night under a tree in 
the Court House yard at Anderson, the gist of which 
was the words of the Psalmist: Promotion cometh 
neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from 
the south. The public is the judge. It putteth down 
one and setteth up another. The poet's audience con- 
sisted of a few friends including the editors of the 
local papers. Standing at the back of a bench, in a 
nervous attitude, which soon gave place to one of de- 
liberation and force, he spoke in substance as follows : 

It is the prejudice of the editors against the West 
that forbids my name in the magazines, the offense 
of locality, which, widened to national proportions, 
will not only threaten the production of good literature, 
but the existence of our institutions, as just a few 
years ago it almost disrupted our Union. Music suffers 




The Old Journal Building, Northeast Corner of Market and 
Pennsylvania Streets, Indianapolis 




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Cover Dr:sTGN for the Poet's First Book in Prose — "The Boss Girl' 
Drawn by the poet with the assistance of Mr. Booth Tarkington 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 123 

from this offense as well as literature. We are 
told that the drama simply does not exist west of New 
York City. Why deny the drama to a great center 
of population like Chicago? Whose fault is this? Per- 
haps our own. And this offense of locality is not con- 
fined to one section. We in the West are as provincial 
as they are in New England. Here are two big cities 
in our wide valley glaring at each other like leopards 
in a jungle. If St. Louis is for something, Chicago 
is against it. The newspapers of one section sniff 
against those of another. Right here at home an edi- 
tor writes about the villainous mania and extravagant 
mouthings of its esteemed contemporary. This is not 
only bad manners, it is bad morals. This cleavage, 
these chronic animosities between communities and 
state should disappear. We will never achieve great- 
ness by fostering the partisan and parochial spirit. It 
is un-American to overvalue ourselves and undervalue 
others. We destroy good in Indiana when we dep- 
recate and antagonize good in Ohio. We should visit 
each other as they did in the days of brotherly love, 
those days of the backwoods. If a man lived twelve 
miles from a pioneer he Was a neighbor. Right here 
v/ithin a half-mile range of the Court House are four 
thousand persons, but they are not neighbors. If we 
must have a Mason and Dixon Line running through 
this country, let it be an equatorial line with sunny 
climes and possibilities of merit and prosperity on each 
side of it. One hemisphere can not exist without the 
other. Man tries to think otherwise but on every hand 
Nature balks him. She shows by her care that dif- 
ferences are not differences after all, that all the zones 
are necessary — the frigid and the torrid, the temper- 



124 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ate and the intemperate. We journey far away to see 
crags and cataracts. Every day Nature reminds us 
that the journey is not only expensive but deceptive. 
Out here a mile from tovs^-n the moonlight glorifies 
Kill Buck meadows with the same heavenly alchemy 
that she silvers a scene on the prairies or in the 
Rockies. The beauty of one place is the beauty of 
another. The good of each is the good of all. Our 
perpetuity as a country depends on our being indis- 
solubly united. In communion there is strength. Let 
the literary folk of the North and the South, the East 
and the West, knovj one another and then they will 
love one another. 

I don't know how far I have digressed from the 
main road, Riley concluded, but of one thing I am cer- 
tain: When the people of this republic are linked to 
one another in hea/rt as they are linked to one an- 
other in their fortunes, then, if not before, the poetry 
of the West will be popular in the East. 

Riley began to court the favor of the magazines be- 
fore moving to Indianapolis. One of his first letters 
was addressed to Charles Scribner's Sons: 

Greenfield, Indiana, January 18, 1878. 
Editor, Scribner's Monthly, 
Dear Sir: 

I address you with the faint hope that what I offer 
you may be an acceptable contribution. Through the 
encouragement of immediate friends and the daily 
press, I have been devoting my attention to the study 
of Poetry. I enclose specimens and a manuscript for 
your inspection. If you find my work of sufficient 
merit I could wish no higher honor than to appear 
before the general public through the medium of your 
Magazine. 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 125 

The poem "Dream" is my latest production if not 
my best, and should you find it worthy of publication 
I ask you to accept it at whatever price you deem 
proper. 

Yours truly, 

J. W. Riley. 

The ^'specimens," including "Fame/' and "An Old 
Sweetheart," and the beautiful sonnet, "Sun and 
Rain," were "respectfully declined," an instance of 
indifference to gold values, said Myron Reed, which 
had no basis for pardon in this world or the next. 
Part of the sonnet the reader shall have here as a 
sample of the poet's art at the beginning of his maga- 
zine ventures: 

"All day the sun and rain have been as friends, 
Each vying with the other which shall be 
Most generous in dowering earth and sea 
With their glad wealth, till each, as it descends, 
Is mingled with the other, where it blends 

In one warm, glimmering mist that falls on me 
As once God's smile fell over Galilee." 

A more persistent effort for eastern recognition was 
Riley's experience with the New York Sun, It grew 
out of his belief that the newspapers had in their keep- 
ing the making of a poet's fame. "I began writing 
vfith some ambition about ten years ago," he said in 
1888. "My experience is that writing poetry is not 
an encouraging occupation. Among distinguished men 
v/ho encouraged me to persevere was Charles A. 
Dana." 

It was a great deal to have the encouragement of 
the ablest editor then living. Not always, according 



126 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

to Riley, were Dana's opinions reasonable. As was 
said, "they were sometimes appalling in their ran- 
tankerous nullification of all the doctrines approved by 
the common sense. But Dana's manner of expressing 
them was perfect, the absolute reflection of his mood.'* 
Riley saw what others saw, that the editor was an un- 
usual man for liking and hating. Dana **had his gods 
and his devils among men, and they were not always 
selected according to common rules." In a word, Riley 
loved him because he made his vast information useful 
"down in the arena of every-day life." The editor 
sympathized with failure for he himself had once 
failed conspicuously. He knew also that the cultivated 
man is not ahvays the best man. He once told Riley 
of a reporter who could not spell four words correctly 
— but who got the facts, who saw vividly the pic- 
turesque, the interesting, the important aspect of 
things. He did his work so well that it was worth the 
time and attention of a man who had knowledge of 
grammar and spelling to rewrite the report. 

Here indeed, in Dana, was brotherly assistance for 
a man in need, toleration of a poet who lacked the 
attainments of the schools. Riley was a poor speller, 
and often his verb did not agree with the subject. 

When Riley began sending poems to the Sun in 
1880, Dana wrote him plainly that his poems lacked 
dignity, the poet did himself great injustice by in- 
dulging so many whimsicalities, when he had within 
him so much of real worth. Riley should quit the sur- 
face and dig for gold. "I was too profoundly im- 
pressed VTith my literary attainments," said Riley. "I 
sent Dana blooming, wildwood verse. He pruned it 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 127 

and at first the pruning hurt, but afterward I saw 
the benefit. Dana brought me out of the tall timber." 

The eminent editor was certain that many authors 
had been puffed into oblivion by too much praise. *lf 
the young writer sets out with the conceit that he is a 
prodigy," he wrote, "his wreck and ruin are inevi- 
table.'' Riley was grateful for the warning; said it 
*'kept him from crowing on the gatepost," 

"When the news of my success in the Sun came rip- 
pling over the Alleghanies," said the poet, "I blushed 
like a girl." Dana's first note was dated 

New York, March 30, 1880. 
The editor of the Sun presents his compliments to 
Mr. J. W. Riley and proposes to publish his little poem 
entitled "Silence" at an early day. The Sun will 
always be very glad to hear from Mr. Riley. 

Writing from the Sun office, May 17, 1880, Dana 
said, "There is a great deal of talent in your poems, 
and I have no doubt that your efforts will finally bring 
you the solid success which alone is worth working 
for. The two small poems we propose to publish, and 
I enclose a check for them and the other pieces which 
have already appeared in the Sun. 'The Wandering 
Jew' I return. It lacks both originality of imagination 
and finish of execution. Tom Johnson's Quit' I do not 
like at all. It has the radical defect of attempting to 
joke with a shocking subject." 

This was scorching, as was also a letter a fortnight 
before, in which the editor was *'sorry" he did not like 
the poem. "It is not healthy," he said. "Why add 
to the morbid poetry of the world?" Riley had been 



128 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

told that Dana could ''make things warm'* for folks 
when he took a notion. Evidently the editor was not 
selecting poems according to the rules of weekly 
papers. Riley replied as follows : 

Mr. Charles A. Dana — 
Dear Sir: 

Although surprised to have my two poems pro- 
nounced morbid and unhealthful, I am none the less 
grateful for the opinion you express. I admit that 
ofttimes in the selection of themes, I seem unfortu- 
nate, but I assure you that my efforts are always 
directed against any unhealthful tone, or touch of 
morbidness. Hereafter I will be still more guarded. 
I incline naturally I think to odd studies, and in that 
peculiar field I am now laboring with unusual in- 
dustry. There is a demand for such work from the 
western papers, a demand sufficient to assist me some- 
v/hat on a rather rugged path. I am a young man 
but in earnest and must succeed, since I have been 
virtually assured by others that the evidence of good 
is in me and I must develop it. 

Again and again I thank you for your kindly ac- 
ceptance of such pieces of mine as you found deserv- 
ing, and hope that you may often pick from those 
I send you something of real worth. 

I am as ever, J. W. RiLEY. 

As Dana grew more helpful Riley was emboldened 
to seek advice on the ''Flying Islands" which had been 
between the hammer and the anvil in the West. How 
would it fare in the East? Accordingly the follow- 
ing letter: 

Charles A. Dana, Esq., 
Dear Sir : 

Something over a year ago I published in one of 
our local papers the enclosed poetical extravaganza, 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 129 

intending: as soon as favorable circumstances per- 
mitted to offer it to some good publisher. I have 
every reason to believe that the performance is strictly 
and strikingly original, and although with scarcely a 
hope that you may have any leisure to devote to an 
examination of it, I would value highly your opinion 
regarding it. I am wholly uninformed regarding the 
measures of procedure for publication in book form, 
and as I have no friends here versed in such matters, 
I apply to you in my extremity. I can furnish, if re- 
quired, references from the best known men of my 
state, as to worth of character, industry, and local 
literary standing. The work, as you may readily per- 
ceive, is not an ambitious one — but merely intended 
to make an odd and pleasant volume for the Holidays 
— so cast and treated as to afford the artist as well as 
author the best possible chance to air his erratic 
fancies and conceits. If you have no time to bestow 
upon my desires, I shall not be disappointed. 
Most truly yours, 

J. W. Riley. 

The Sun, New York, June, 1880. 
Dear Mr. Riley: 

I have read your poem with attention. My advice 
to you is not to publish it. Twenty years hence, for- 
tune favoring you, you may make a poem of this kind 
which will possess the necessary quality; but this one 
seems to me much too young. As for talent it has 
plenty of it; and yet it is unripe. Its wit is often 
faulty, its idea imperfectly worked out and its taste 
in some instances the reverse of poetical. 
Yours very truly, 

Charles A. Dana. 

About the same time there was a visitation from the 
poet's home district. An exchange was finding it 
monotonous to notice his nonsense. There should be 



130 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

a law against it. "He is so prolific/' said the local 
critic, *'that it is difficult to keep up with him. He 
breaks out here and there and everywhere, and evi- 
dently has the rhyming mania in its most virulent 
stage. The wonder is not so much that he rhymes — 
he can not help that — ^but that reputable newspapers 
will publish the twaddle. He can hardly pay for 
it at so much a line, and yet we can not for the life 
of us see how he can get his verses into the New York 
Sun on any other conditions." 

Newspaper abuse seldom pushed the poet into a cor- 
ner. His relative, Judge Hough of Greenfield, said 
that he stood fire with the sang-froid of his grand- 
mother, Margaret Riley, whose composure was the talk 
of pioneer neighborhoods. Riley "embalmed the local 
criticism," as he said, and dismissed it from thought. 
But he was grateful to the Sun: 

Charles A. Dana, Esq. 
Dear Sir: 

I ask you to accept my warmest thanks for your 
kindness, and good advice regarding "The Flying 
Islands." I feel that I owe you more than mere grati- 
tude of written words, and shall hope that some rare 
future will bring me within reach of your friendly 
hand, that I may thank you as I most desire. 
,As ever gratefully, 

J. W. Riley. 

Knowing the value of Dana's criticism Riley advised 
others to seek it. "The Sun is good pay," he wrote 
a friend, "and I wedge a poem in there every once- 
in-a- while. Don't be discouraged if at first refused. 
Four poems have come back to me in succession. But 
let me suggest that when you offer the Sun anything, 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 131 

let it be thoroughly wholesome, warm and cheery; as 
Bob Ingersoll would say, — *full of splendid human- 
ity.'" 

In 1879 when Mary H. Catherwood and Riley were 
''playing literature" in the **Whittleford Letters," she 
congratulated him on the steady realization of his 
dream, was thankful that she had been permitted to see 
the day when the Little Town o' Tailholt was neither 
**big enough, show enough, wide enough, handy 
enough, nor good enough" for the poet; that, after all, 
he was finding railroads, factories, theaters, graded 
streets, crowds and church steeples good company. A 
magazine failure had brought her ^'pecuniary distress." 
She could not get "the ghost of a laugh out of it." But 
what joy it was to know that Riley did not have "to 
write for bread and coffee ; that he could drift off into 
the woods and sing delicious songs without having to 
calculate in the midst of his poetic passion when they 
would probably be most available, and how much they 
would bring." 

The contrary wasi the truth. Years passed and 
still poems did not pay for "bread and coffee." To 
Riley it was a source of mortification that he reached 
his thirty-third birthday without magazine recogni- 
tion. He warned his co-workers on the Journal, when 
they reminded him of the milestones in his career, 
that they did so at their peril. "When youth is melt- 
ing away," he complained, "the period in which a 
poet can alone achieve anything, the hours that wrap 
their dismal wings around him on his birthday are 
above all others the most dreadful and undesirable." 

To his secretary Riley once remarked that he had 
grown football hair a long while before the maga- 



132 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

zines caressed him. The yowl of critics had been as 
musical as the howl of the hounds to *'Coon-dog Wess." 
Magazine weather, he went on smilingly, is March 
weather. 1st to the 5th, Snow-storms and squally — 
7th to 10th, Unusually high winds — 11th to 15th, 
Freezing as far south as "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" 
—16th to 20th, Mild, soft weather-~21st to 26th, 
Cloudy conditions with heavy rainfall on "Fame" and 
on "Silence" — 27th to 31st, Slush and mud, with a vio- 
lent tornado on the "Flying Islands." A trying season 
is the magazine season. It is full of unlucky days — 
and woe to the poet who is taken sick at that time, for 
he seldom recovers. 

It is not just one or a score of disappointments that 
made his hope of success feeble. The days, if chained 
together, would make weeks and months. He longed 
for pecuniary as well as literary reward. "The old, 
independent, God-blessed sense of hope is strong upon 
me," he wrote a friend. "Perhaps I will be victor after 
all. Down on my knees the past week I have prayed 
for it. The utter loneliness and dearth and need of 
something assured for the future is the cause of all 
my many falterings and failures. When I try, yet 
never touch on the success of the material living which 
others seem to grasp and hold and have, why, then it 
is that I give up entirely, and for a time lose myself 
in the folly of forgetting. That is the curse that rests 
on me, and follows me and hounds me down. I would 
rather be the meanest man that carries mortar in a 
hod than be vexed this way with an ambition stout as 
Death, and a temperament as weak as water. If I 
only had a little store and sold prunes and rusty hooks 
and eyes, how much happier I would be, and how 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 133 

much better it would be for all who yet hold me in 
their affection and esteem." 

Commenting rather penitently at a later period on 
his despondency, Riley said, "My inspiring genius that 
week was not the bust of Dickens on the wall ; it was 
a little crockery poodle on the floor." 

A small circle in Indianapolis were wont to say 
among themselves and sometimes to his friends that 
magazines did not accept Riley's verse because it was 
not poetry — it lacked the training of the schools and 
so forth. One remarked, in rough vernacular, that 
"Riley should first get the hayseed out of his hair 
and the slumgullion off his boots before mixing in so- 
ciety." Myron Reed, hearing of the remark, one day 
in the Journal Informal Club when Riley was absent, 
made characteristic reply, admitting first that the 
Hoosier Poet would to a certain degTee be benefited 
by polish. But the attempt of the magazines to put 
language in the place of spirit and feeling was play- 
ing Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Reed went on to 
say to the gentlemen that the verse-maker may pride 
himself on language; he may accumulate synonyms 
and rhymes; he may build line after line of allitera- 
tion, but the result is not poetry. Glittering rhetoric 
and word painting will not do. Such verse, though 
set between "peacock feathers and head and foot 
pieces of the choicest scrolling," is not poetry. Its 
glitter is not gold. 

"The magazine editors are largely responsible for 
this," said he. "They themselves — some of them — are 
professional poets, but their artificial composition does 
not make a poem. It is chilly as an iceberg." 

**It is a great mistake," added Reed warmly, "to 



134 JAMES WHITCOMB KILEY 

suppose that no American can write poetry unless he 
conforms to accepted standards and can command ten 
dollars a line. If I take up land that is absolutely 
worthless and m^ake it yield potatoes, they are mine 
— in the name of my grandfather who marched with 
Montgomery to Quebec, I say they are mine — and I 
am entitled to reward for producing them. Whitcomb 
Riley found here in this Middle West a piece of worth- 
less land. He made it yield poems, and I say the poems 
are his and the magazines should pay him for them." 
Reed then read one of Riley's recent poems, 
"Shadow and Shine": 

''Storms of winter, and deepening snows, 

When will you end? I said, 
For the soul within me was dumb with woes, 

And my heart uncomforted. 
When will you cease, dismal days? 

When will you set me free? 
For the frozen world and its desolate ways 

Are all unloved of me. 

"I waited long but the answer came — 

The kiss of the sunshine lay 
Warm as a flame on the lips that frame 

The song in my heart to-day. 
Blossoms of summertime waved in the air 

Glimmers of sun in the sea; 
Fair thoughts followed me everywhere, 

And the world was dear to me." 

"The magazines have kept Riley waiting long 
enough," concluded Reed. "The poet who wrote that 
has seen the smile of the night and the dew and the 
blue of morning skies. He deserves recognition and 
remuneration." 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 135 

Meanwhile scraps of encouragement reached the 
poet. "There is no fear for this man's fame," wrote 
the editor of the Boston Pilot *'The author of 'The 
Shower' will grow to be an American poet or we know 
nothing of the signs of genius." 

Chief among those who encouraged him, in point 
of age, was the mother of Indiana verse, Mrs. Sarah 
T. Bolton. 

*'Nothing great is lightly won, 
Nothing won is lost," 

she had said to Riley one day at a Pioneer Meeting — 
a sentiment from her popular poem, "Paddle Your 
Own Canoe." "I know what it means to wrest the 
wreath of fame from the hand of fate," she remarked 
at another time. She too had had to wait for the 
morning. 

The poet's comments on the adverse conditions were 
truly Rileyesque. Addressing Ella Wheeler in his 
familiar way he wrote : 

Dear Filigree: 

I once thought myself quite a poet, 

And wanting to prove it and show it, 

I humped up one shoulder 

And grabbed a penholder 

And sat down and wro-et and wro-et. 

With your letter came one from the Atlantic re- 
turning the best poem I ever wrote. A good letter 
however, namby-pambying about the way and how, 
and regretting — Bah! how I hate that word. Now I 
shall send the poem to the Harper's and if they return 
it I shall frame it in gold and keep it for home use — 



136 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

for no medium but the very loftiest shall ever give it 
to the world. With the Atlantic letter too came one 
from St. Nicholas accepting a contribution. Hurrah! 
— just as they all will jump to do some day, I swear! 
Now I am going to flounce down and give Messrs. old 
Atlantic a poem that will paralyze them, for I want 
them to see at least that I can write them as fast as 
they can send them back. I have dozens under way, 
and still buzzing like a hive." 

The Harper's returned the poem, "Song of Yester- 
day,*' for good reasons as did the Atlantic — reasons 
which the poet himself discovered before he included 
it in Rhymes of Childhood a decade later. Radical 
changes were made in several stanzas. Had William 
Dean Howells, then editor of the Atlantic, read the 
improved lines, he doubtless would not have declined 
the poem. 

A long list of magazine poems, covering a period 
of ten years, beginning in 1878, Riley labeled "Reveries 
of a Rhymer," but the reveries were melancholy when 
he saw the rejection slips. Other Indiana writers had 
manuscripts rejected, but they accepted their fate 
more philosophically. If there v/as moaning they kept 
it from the public. They did not divulge it in nev/s- 
paper interviews as Riley did. What seemed a moun- 
tain to him was a hillock to them. Perhaps the 
thumping of fate was one of the numerous ways Na- 
ture had of mellowing his heart and making it im- 
pressible, keeping it sensitive to the million simple 
joys and sorrows around him. 

Two or three magazines had a way of accepting a 
poem and then delaying its publication. One sent a 
check for ten dollars for a poem which it never pub- 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 137 

lished. It was said the poem was laid away in a vault 
and forgotten. The Centii/ry received "Nothin' To 
Say" in 1883, but did not publish till August, 1887. 
A week after finishing it Riley wrote of it to B. S. 
Parker : 

Indianapolis, June 10, 1883. 
Dear Parker: 

Just from Greenfield, where an hour ago I mailed 
you a copy of a bit of dialect, *'Nothin' To Say." Now 
congratulate me, for here I find waiting a check from 
the Century magazine for same poem, and a letter ac- 
companying it, and the return of a serious poem. And 
now I am going to double up this same serious poem 
and send it to Harper' Sy and if they return it, send it 
to the Atlantic, and if they return it, send it to Lippin- 
cott's and so forth and so forth. It is good and I 
know it, and if nobody on earth accepts it, I will just 
take it home to my aims and love it all myself. 

As ever, J. W. Riley. 

Soon after his poems began to appear in standard 
magazines, Riley's advice was sought by young writ- 
ers, who, strange to say, believed he had ascended to 
his place at a bound. When he was too busy to write 
the stranger an individual letter, he copied from one 
he kept on his table for common counsel. **RaiI not 
at Fortune because you have lost your game," it read. 
*lf the editor rejects your matter and persists in so 
doing, be patient and ask him why, and then correct 
what he says is wrong. Think no less of yourself 
but less of your poem, if he returns it. Take up the 
rejected product and pitilessly dig down into its vitals 
and find out its secret ailment, and set about a cure. 
Keep on shaping and filing and tinkering at it till 
the editor won't want to send it back. And whatever 



138 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

you do, don't worry. All is well — even tears, if they 
slip up on a fellow when he is not looking, are good to 
see the world through every once-in-a-while. Every 
poet that ever made fame or fortune, made it through 
forcing dovfn just such opposition as you or any com- 
ing poet must encounter. You must pass that gaunt- 
let, or you are not a poet, and all your would-be help- 
ers on earth can not make you one. If all young poets 
knew Patience and her most gracious uses, there would 
be more older poets of the proper dimensions. Keep 
on trying — not to address the editors but the public. 
In time you will find the kind of an editor I sought for 
fifteen years before I scared him up and bagged the 
gentleman. Keep on trying — though the critics 
peck away at you like rooks at a rotten apple. By and 
by you will be so inured to the treatment that you 
can no longer appreciate the dear old pain it once 
gave you. Keep on trying — and eventually you will 
not want any better fun than to see some obstacle lift 
up its ominous head in your path." (Wise, almost 
dramatic counsel, but the poet had not always lived up 
to it.) 

In his letters Riley touched on questions that knock 
for answer at the heart of all young writers ; and un- 
consciously, and sometimes consciously, he described 
his own exertions for literary prizes. Thus he did 
years after his magazine success, in a letter to Miss 
May L. Dodds : 

Dear Miss Dodds: 

All art work is hard work, and no excess of in- 
dustry and patience can go along with the resolve to 
do any great thing right. There is no easy way to do 
well. Every master, in this day, was a novice 'way 



WAITING FOR THE MORNING 139 

back yonder — even though beginning, a positive 
genius. And in every instance, his line of develop- 
ment, ril stake the soul o' me, owes more to search- 
ing, silent observation, like thought application, than 
to his native endowment, inspiration, or vi^hatever else 
his rapt contemporaneous worshipers may choose to 
call it. It should be the study of any artist to whole- 
somely please the audience. Therefore that should be 
the fundamental study. What does the audience 
want? Always something pleasant It does not 
want sobs and tears and agony, — it does want smiles 
and wholesome cheer and heartening words — and God 
knows it needs all this, — for in all its vastness it is 
made up of just such people as our people — your home 
folks and my home folks. So we must do our very 
level-best to win and hold their high esteem and favor. 
Very truly your friend, 

James Whitcomb Riley. 

Miss Dodds was so emphatically encouraged by his 
first letter and so cordial in her appreciation of it that 
the poet, a few weeks later, wrote her a second: 

Dear Miss Dodds: 

Positively you must not be less assured of your 
work's real worth because it is returned — however 
many times. All writers — however established — 
suffer the same trial. So, just pocket all resentment 
and keep on writing — trying. It's wise, of course, to 
most diligently review your returned work — and twist 
and bore and dig out what is the matter with it. 
Maybe it's too sad — or hopeless — or too light, or too 
heavy. It's too something, or some editor would take 
it to his heart of hearts. Maybe its sole fault is some 
very trivial thing which no editor, however, has time 
to write you about. For instance, till tv/o or three 
years ago, my manuscript invariably had warmth 
spelled "warmpth." In all seriousness, I ask you, if 
you were an editor with your desk stacked full of 



140 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

proffered contributions, would you read any further 
than "warmpth" to convince yourself that there was 
a writer whose work had, of course, come from his 
hand and mind wholly unfinished and unworthy? 
Every day and hour there is something to learn, and 
we must keep at it cheerfully and with the gladdest 
possible heart. Read all best writers and ^permeate 
the secrets of their success. Their success, be sure, 
may be your own most righteously, if you sound the 
deep processes of their art, and learn with them to 
master the million little things which in time make up 
the glorious aggregate of perfection in any art. 

With all assurance of and best wishes for your wel- 
fare every way, James Whitcomb Riley. 

Although Riley began seeking admission to the 
magazines at the beginning of his "Prolific Decade," 
not till its end did he find himself safe on the inside. 
The period was one of specters, dangers, pleasures, 
music and adventures. He sought encouragement in 
all directions. Time and again he refreshed himself 
with a sentiment attributed to PYancis Marion — "The 

HEART IS ALL : WHEN THAT IS INTENSELY INTERESTED 

A MAN CAN DO ANYTHING" — the household adage, 
which he had in youth from his mother, who remem- 
bered it as a tradition brought from the Carolinas by 
the Marine family. The poet hoped when the goal 
seemed inaccessible. Intensity of desire was the 
pledge of fulfillment. "I mean to keep up vigilantly 
my longing for recognition," he said; "that will aug- 
ment Fate's favoring tendencies," — ^his simple words 
for the more rhetorical language of the English Pre- 
mier, that the man who broods lovingly and long over 
an idea, however wild, will find that his dream is but 
the prophecy of coming fate. 



CHAPTER VIII 

STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 

NOT until he had published his first book did the 
poet abandon the use of noms de plume and, as 
he said, set his full name at the dashboard of 
the whole endurin' alphabet. But even after that he 
was fond of signing fictitious names to letters, such 
as Doc Marigold, Uncle Sidney, Brother Whittleford, 
The Bad Haroun, Troubled Tom, Old E. Z. Mark, 
James Popcorn Riley, and to literary editors James 
Hoosier Riley, the Whitcomb Poet. At other times, 
particularly when chatting with friends, he was Truth- 
ful James, Philiper Flash, the Remarkable Man, and 
an Adjustable Lunatic. 

J. Whit or Jay Whit was his first pseudonym in 
prose, affixed to sketches long since consigned to *'the 
phantom past — stories too scant of genius or talent 
for publication." In poetry he first signed himself 
"Edyrn" to such baubles as "A Backward Look,'* and 
others, manuscripts now stained by the passage of half 
a century. Riley was strangely fascinated by the 
Tennysonian character. Eagerly he traced Edyrn's 
history through The Idyls of the King. The knight's 
reformation appealed to him strongly, doubtless 
through a resolution in his own life, formed "in the 
impressibility of youth and hope." Since he was ap- 
proaching his majority his mother was especially 

141 



142 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

pleased, for she had been much concerned about his 
moral future. His father was inclined to severity. 
Her way was love. Evil, as Tennyson had shown in 
the poem, could be subdued. *'Edyrn" had wrought 
a great work upon himself. One readily imagines the 
glow of hope and beauty in the mother's eyes when 
the son read to her this noble passage, and, after 
reading it, how they talked about the confusions of 
wasted youth and why it was that Love had so often 
to clasp hands with Grief. Tennyson went on to show 
that man seldom does repent and "pick the vicious 
quitch of blood and custom wholly out of him, and 
make all clean and plant himself afresh." Riley was 
not able, either by "grace or will" to do this at his 
majority. Seven years elapsed before there was a 
complete change of front — ^before (in his own words) 
he "began in dead earnest to stir up the echoes and 
make them attend to business." Many times he was 
"drowned in darkness" before he prayerfully asked 
himself: How many of my selves are dead? But the 
Tennysonian lesson and the mother's love were in- 
delibly impressed on his memory. 

"Drop your nom de plume that you may thoroughly 
enjoy the recompense of praise," wrote Riley to Cap- 
tain Harris in the beginning of his fame; yet he him- 
self at the same time was making the most of fictitious 
names. In 1878 Parker made public in the Mercury 
some advice to the author of "Flying Islands." "We 
wish softly but firmly to suggest to Riley," wrote 
Parker, "that certain tricks, which the public is be- 
ginning to understand, by which he seeks to give him- 
self notoriety, must now be abandoned. He has the 
elements of the true poet in him:. He has been very 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 143 

successful in illuminating them, and has made an 
excellent start. Now he must depend upon the merits 
of what he produces to sustain and increase the reputa- 
tion already achieved. Tricks and subterfuge will 
serve him no longer, and he must turn his back upon 
them." 

Riley did not heed the advice. Too long, he thought, 
he had been signing himself Jay Whit or J. W. Riley. 
Straightway he decided to be more sensational. Almost 
immediately he attributed productions to John C. 
Walker, "a crack-brain poet," thereby starting the 
Walker boom. It was as if he had set a mantrap for 
the confusion of editors. Suddenly — click — click — and 
one by one they were caught, among them his dear 
friend of the Mercury y who was pleased to observe that 
"John C. Walker of the Kokomo Tribune has much of 
the peculiar flavor of Riley, and is certainly destined to 
divide honors with him." 

The Tribune indorsed the Mercury's opinion : "Judg- 
ing from Mr. Walker's more rapid stride into public 
favor (with no disparagement to Mr. Riley, of course) , 
it certainly argues that Walker is destined not only to 
prove Mr. Riley's equal, but that he will eclipse him, 
and that too in the near future. Meantime, Mr. Walker 
will no doubt be highly gratified to be compared thus 
favorably to Mr. Riley, whose future is as bright as a 
June morning." 

"John C. Walker of Indianapolis," wrote Bob Bur- 
dette in the Burlington Hawkeye, "is the Bret Harte 
of the Hoosier State. His Tribune poems have de- 
serv^edly attracted wide attention, and they are the 
best attractions of that very generally attractive jour- 
nal." The Tribune was content to add that Mr. Bur- 



144 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

dette was correct except as to the residence of Mr. 
Walker, who was then ^'summering at his pretty home, 
Castle Nowhere, in the vicinity of Parts Unknown." 

*'John C. Walker" soon became the popular poet of 
the Tribune, and the occasion of considerable anxiety 
in the public mind. As an exchange had it, "He is 
bothering the literary people of our city more than 
the strike. Everybody likes his poems, but no one can 
establish his identity." A lyceum bureau, with Riley's 
name already on its list, wrote the Tribune to secure 
"Walker" for a lecture tour. The opinion prevailed 
outside Indianapolis that "Walker" lived in that city. 
The directory listed but two men of that name, and 
neither had ever been suspected of poetic abilities. 
The Indianapolis Herald was complimented, hoped the 
surmise would prove true, wanted to coax a contribu- 
tion from the poet when the weather grew cooler. 
"V/e will wager a year's subscription," said the Misha- 
waka Enterprise, "that John C. Walker is none other 
than J. W. Riley in disguise. We can not prove it, 
but if Riley did not write *Romancin' ' and Tom John- 
son's Quit,' he ought to have done so. Moreover, the 
poet of the Poetical Gymnastics in the Indianapolis 
Herald has a very Riley-ish rhythm, and if he too is 
not our friend J. W., we should like mightily to know 
who the author is. We call upon both papers to rise 
and confess, and quiet the growing curiosity that pre- 
vails throughout the state." 

Public curiosity was soon quieted. In 1879 the sym- 
pathies of Herald readers were touched by the poem, 
"Hope," which appeared mysteriously in the "Gym- 
nastic" column in September: 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 145 

"Hope, bending o'er me one time, snowed the flakes 

Of her white touches on my folded sight. 
And whispered, half rebukingly, '^Hiat makes 
My little giri so sorrowful to-night?' 

"0 scarce did I unclasp my lids, or lift 

Their tear-glued fringes, as with blind embrace 
I caught within my arms the mother-gift, 
And with wild kisses dappled all her face. 

"That was a baby dream of long ago : 

My fate is fanged with frost, and tongued with 
flame: 
My woman-soul, chased helpless through the snow, 
Stumbles and staggers on without an aim. 

"And yet, here in my agony, sometimes 

A faint voice reaches down from some far height, 
And whispers through a glamouring of rhymes, — 
*What makes my little girl so sad to-night T " 

One memorable line revealed the mystery — "My fate 
is fanged with frost and tongued with flame." "There 
is but one genius in the state," remarked Myron Reed, 
"who could write that line, and he was born in Green- 
fleld." 

Thus was established "Walker's" identity and the 
veil lifted from "Poetical Gymnastics." Friends not 
only discovered the 7^eal authorship of "Hope," but a 
more important fact, that the tendrils of its author's 
love were reaching out to the fallen sons and daughters 
of men. Concerning "Hope," Riley wrote a friend as 
follows: "You like my poetry, I remember. As I 
have had a rhythmical attack to-day — nothing serious, 
but just a trifling vigor — I send you the best defined 



146 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

symptom of my affliction, hoping you may find in it 
material for a smile/* It was true that smiles pre- 
dominated in Riley's verse, but in **Hope" friends 
found cause for tears. A similar poem, "The Ban,'* 
was written about the same time, and later awakened 
the sympathies of Journal readers. 

When it was publicly known that Riley was the man 
behind the poems, he received some more advice. Both 
friends and strangers were concerned. "You make a 
great mistake," wrote one from Illinois, "in using two 
signatures. Do you not see that this robs you of half 
your fame?" "Shed your nom de plume," wrote an- 
other, "and shed it soon. Sign your own name, and 
don't let your laurels go sailing round on eddying 
winds." 

He signed his name a year or two and then again 
grew restless. "I must improve the shining hours," he 
joked merrily one day in May, 1882, 

" 'New ways I must attempt, my groveling name 
To raise aloft, and wing my flight to fame.' " 

Within a month he was galloping like a gamester 
before public curiosity as "Benjamin F. Johnson of 
Boone." In a letter to Roselind Jones, he told why he 
inclined toward the unconventional. He would have 
her know that the hours were twanging and tingling — 
poems were leaping and revelling through his veins. 
He was producing at the rate of two a day. "Years 
ago," he went on, "I received a letter from J. T. Trow- 
bridge. I was then, as you are now, writing without 
reward, but hungrier a thousand times for some crumb 
of pecuniary recompense for my work. Trowbridge 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 147 

said in order to make poetry marketable in this day 
and age, it must be a part of it — that is, it must pos- 
sess the qualities of the great Present — dash, brilliancy, 
strength, originality — and always a marked indi- 
viduality of its own — a striking something that would 
stamp it from the ordinary. These are not his words, 
but the meaning of them as nearly as I can give it, 
after the constant endeavor of years to follow his ad- 
vice. Then it was not long till some hint of real suc- 
cess came dawning — not in the East, however, where 
naturally one looks for dawn, but here in the West, 
where are so many papers seemingly eager to advance 
and lend assistance to the poor, bedrabbled strugglers 
in the ever-standing army of poets, jingle-ringers, and 
verse carpenters. Since then I have been steadily gain- 
ing until now — with the exception of one magazine 
and paper of the East — I have more engagements for 
verse alone here in my western home than I can 
creditably fill — ^the pay not much, but still enough to 
humor some extravagances, and still increasing." 

To Riley, on entering the profession of letters, the 
field seemed crowded. There were so many writers 
there could not be room for them all! The call came 
to him to make room for one more — ^room for himself. 
He was sure that he could not do this without a strong 
and honest consciousness of worth, and that he must 
always emphasize his belief in himself in his attitude 
toward the public. The public might call it egotism, 
yet the more he manifested it the sooner he ''would 
shake hands with Success." In order to soften the 
offense of egotism Riley sought, by disguising their 
authorship, to distribute his wares widely and quickly. 
He thus circulated a great number of poems in a 



148 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

limited time, won the public's approval, and at the 
same time avoided the danger of having his name too 
often in print. He also wanted to make clear to the 
public that he drew his inspiration from the scenes of 
every-day life. The public would love poetry, he be- 
lieved, if it came to them in the natural idiom of a 
writer in whom cultivation had not suffocated the 
natural local sentiment, the frank, warm-heartedness 
of rural neighbors. The pathos, humor, and philosophy 
of that life would be more effective when clad in 
homely garb. 

A short while before he began writing the Boone 
County Poems, Riley had called on Longfellow in Cam- 
bridge, who had previously assured him of the genu- 
ineness of his Hoosier dialect verse. There was no 
rich nor poor, no high nor low in poetry. ''We are 
all of one common family,'' said Longfellow — and 
straightway Riley determined to verify, in his humble 
way, what his host had said. There was poetry in the 
tender thought beneath the veil of rustic phrase, and 
the public should recognize it. The personality of its 
author, whoever he might be, would become vividly 
interesting and an object of admiration and affection. 
Thus, when the real author should become known, his 
reputation would be widened. 

"Johnson of Boone has a claim on our respect," said 
Riley in an interview, "because he is true to nature. 
I do not believe in dressing up nature. Nature is good 
enough for its Creator, — it is good enough for me. To 
me the man Johnson is a living figure. I know what 
he has read. People seem to think that if a man is 
out of plumb in his language, he is likewise in his 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 149 

morals. Now the Old Man looks queer, I admit. His 
clothes do not fit him. He is bent and awkward. But 
that does not prevent his having a fine head and deep 
and tender eyes, and a soul in him you can recom- 
mend." 

A further reason for using the pseudonym was the 
delight Riley derived from doing things in disguise. 
While the public was guessing, he could laugh in his 
sleeve. "You see," he remarked in extenuation of his 
whim, ''I was not yet done with fooling. I was still 
afraid of my ov/n name." He showed a curious liking 
for the genial old farmer of Boone. The wild wood 
verse of his neighborly poet, his rustic man of straw, 
seemed to please him better than that he wrote over 
his own signature. Indeed, he indulged the disguise 
to such a degree that it became vastly more to him 
than a fiction, just as, in his fancy, he had always at 
his side when writing poems for children, the Lad of 
Used-To-Be, who had appeared to him in a vision in 
boyhood. 

"It was a dim, chill, loveless afternoon in the late 
fall of 'eighty-two," Riley -wrote in his sketch entitled 
"A Caller From Boone," "when I first saw Benj. F. 
Johnson. From time to time the daily paper on which 
I worked had been receiving, among the general liter- 
ary driftage of amateur essayists, poets and sketch- 
waiters, some conceits in verse that struck the editorial 
head as decidedly novel; and, as they were evidently 
the production of an unlettered man, and an old man, 
and a farmer at that, they were usually spared the 
waste-basket, and preserved — not for publication, but 
to pass from hand to hand among the members of the 



150 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

staff as simply quaint and mirth-provoking specimens 
of the verdancy of both the venerable author and the 
Muse inspiring him/' 

It was a somber afternoon, Riley goes on to say in 
the sketch, when the Old Man of sixty-live entered the 
Journal sanctum. He had the most cheery and whole^ 
some expression in his face and eye that the poet had 
ever seen. He wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed 
felt hat on his broad, bronzed brow, and an old-styled 
frock-coat, but a clean white shirt and collar of one 
piece, with a string-tie and double bow beneath a long 
white beard. Thus the farmer from Boone introduced 
himself, having come to town to consult "members of 
the staff*' about the poems he had been contributing 
to the Journal, 

In his introductory note to the Homestead Edition 
of his works, Riley expressed himself finely. **No 
further word seems due or pertinent,'' he wrote, 
"unless it be to emphasize the strictly conscientious 
intent of the real writer to be lost in the personality 
of the supposed old Hoosier author, Benj. F. Johnson. 
The generous reader is fervently invoked to regard 
the verse-product herein not only as the work of the 
old man's mind, but as the patient labor of his un- 
skilled hand and pen." 

The Johnson Poems, as readers of the Indianapolis 
Journal (where they first appeared) came to know 
and talk about them, "were so subtle in their grasp 
of character," it has been aptly said, "so artful in 
their artlessness, so brimful of the actual flavor and 
savor of the soil, that they fooled even members of the 
Journal staff, and they, like everybody else, supposed 
that the poems really came from some rural philoso- 




y [riy^yr^ 







TlmrfidairXHre^iiKy 



warn 



The Poet in 1886, the Year he First Included "Little Orphant Annie" 
IN His Public Readings 



^■E' 




A Boyhood Memory, the Old Swiaimin'-Hole in Brandywine 

Ckeek— 1860 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 151 

pher, some gnarled old farmer, in whose secret heart 
the sap of ancient summers was still astir. They were 
full of the homeliest similes, and the meter was as 
ragged as the sleave of care, but they contained 
unquestionably the touch of nature that makes the 
members of the human family love one another/' 

It was not quite true that the poems fooled every- 
body. A few discerning ones, such as Robert Burdette 
and Myron Reed, knew the Little Man behind the 
curtain. "Glad to hear from you," wrote Burdette 
from his country home in Pennsylvania ; "glad to read 
Mr. Johnson's poems ; glad to know at the second line 
of The Old Swimmin'-Hole' who Mr. Johnson is. Wish 
you could run down to this farm a little while. I am 
speckled as a railroad restaurant cracker.^' 

The poem was printed in the Journal, June 17, 1882, 
under the caption, "A Boone County Pastoral," with 
editorial comment as follows: 

Benj. F. Johnson of Boone County, who considers 
the Journal a "verry valubul" newspaper, writes to 
inclose us an original poem, desiring that we kindly 
accept it for publication, as "many neghbers and 
friends is asking him to have same struck off." 

Mr. Johnson thoughtfully informs us that he is "no 
edjucated man," but that he has "from childhood up 
till old enugh to vote, always wrote more or less 
poetry, as many of an album in the neghberhood can 
testify." Again he says that he writes "from the 
heart out" ; and there is a touch of genuine pathos in 
the frank avowal, "There is times when I write the 
tears rolls down my cheeks." 

In all sincerity, Mr. Johnson, we are glad to publish 
the poem you send, and just as you have written it. 
That is its greatest charm. Its very defects compose 
its excellence. You need no better education than the 



152 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

one from which emanates "The Old Swimmin*-Hole." 
It is real poetry, and all the more tender and lovable 
for the unquestionable evidence it bears of having 
been written **from the heart out." The only thing 
we find to criticize at all, relative to the poem, is your 
closing statement to the effect that "it was wrote to 
go to the tune of The Captain With His Whiskers !* " 
You should not have told us that, Rare Ben Johnson ! 

Neither admirers nor adverse critics of "Johnson's" 
contributions suffered the grass to grow under their 
feet. Early friends were certain they recognized in 
the "sturdy old myth of Boone" a neighborhood boy, 
who once lived in Greenfield. Boone County sought 
diligently for Rare Ben Johnson, but found no one of 
the name in that "neck of the woods." Echoes of the 
poems came from Ohio and Nev/ England, A Harvard 
professor was cured of the blues after reading them. 
Two factions rose up in a western college town, one 
claiming that Benj. F. Johnson was the real writer 
and "James Whitcomb Riley" his pseudonym. Editors 
grew uneasy for Riley's fame, saying that "Johnson of 
Boone" threatened to excel Riley as the poet genius of 
Indiana. One writer, a Boone County pedagogue, pro- 
nounced the pastoral "a piece of dialect drivel,"— a 
criticism considerably at variance with Professor 
Henry A. Beers, who finds in "the quaint, simple, 
innocent Hoosier farmer, Benjamin F. Johnson, a more 
convincing person than Lowell's Hosea Biglow." The 
Boone County critic, bursting with local pride, v/as 
certain his region had been "grossly outraged." "Evi- 
dently," he said, "the Journal has been imposed upon 
by some designing youth, who contemplates breaking 
out as a dialect poet, and is merely feeling the pulse 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 153 

of the public and testing the credulity and patience of 
editors before he appears full-fledged and frightful 
over his own name." 

As the lyrical contributions continued to flow into 
the Journal office from Boone County, Riley increased 
the confusion among the exchanges by giving his 
opinion of Mr. Johnson's poetic value, sometimes an 
unfavorable one. Although the county poet was "by 
no means a man of learning or profound literary 
attainments,'* Riley was always glad to receive letters 
from him, always charmed at the ^'delicious glimpse" 
the Old Man gave of "his inspiration, modes of study, 
home life and surroundings." One exchange resented 
Riley's unfavorable comments. It was evident that 
"Johnson of Boone" lacked education, but it was con- 
temptible in the Journal to hold up his imperfections 
to ridicule. "Johnson" had the soul of a poet, and had 
the Journal corrected the lapses in grammar and spell- 
ing, his poems would not suffer in comparison with 
those of Riley, the JournaVs poet. "And that editor," 
said Robert Burdette, "did actually take The Old 
Swimmin'-Hole' and polish it and varnish it, set it up 
in good English in his weekly to show how fine the 
poem looked in custom-made clothes. As if one should 
put a mansard roof and a bay window on an old log 
cabin, tear down the stick chimney, brick up the fire- 
place and put in a register, tear the ^chinkin' ' out of 
the logs, tear away the trumpet vine and honeysuckle, 
rough-coat it, paint it white and put on bright green 
shutters and say. There now, doesn't it look too rustic 
and romantic for anything?'" 

Meanwhile "Johnson of Boone" kept on "peppering*' 
the Journal office with his contributions, kept on prov- 



154 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ing that he, no matter how ungrammatically he wrote, 
had a message for the people because he had lived. 
Occasionally he accompanied a poem with a letter. 
*'A11 nature," he once wrote, "was in tune day before 
yesterday when the Jourrml came to hand. It had 
ben a-rainin' hard fer some days, but that morning 
opened up clear as a whistle. No clouds was in the 
skies, and the air was bammy with the warm sunshine 
and the wet smell of the earth and the locus-blossoms 
and the flowers and pennyroil and boneset. I got up, 
the first one about the place, and went forth to the 
pleasant fields. I fed the stock with lavish hand, and 
wortered them in merry glee; they was no bird in all 
the land no happier than me. I hev just wrote a verse 
of poetry in this letter. See if you can find it" 

The Old Man was well aware of his "own uneduca- 
tion," but that was no reason why "the feelings of 
the sole'' should be "stunted in thair growth" : 

"Ef I could sing — sweet and low- — 

And my tongue 
Could twitter, don't you know, — 

Ez I sung 

Of the Summer-time, 'y Jings! 

All the words and birds and things 

That kin warble, and hes wings. 

Would jes' swear 

And declare 
That they never heerd sich singin' anywhere !" 

When, late in August, "Johnson of Boone" sent his 
poem, "My Old Friend, William Leachman," to the 
Journal, in which he referred to the old tavern, 
"Travelers' Rest," and the "Counterfitters' Nest," and 
the stage-coach and the old Plank Road, the author- 



STORY OF HIS PEN NAMES 155 

ship of the poems was disclosed and the Hancock 
Democrat announced definitely that they were "from 
the pen of our young friend and poet, James W. Riley." 
It might have added that he also was the author of 
the prose explanations. 

There being nothing left but confession (Riley hav- 
ing accomplished his purpose), the Journal promptly 
printed "The Clover," the last poem in the "Johnson" 
series, with the following editorial comment : 

The Journal prints this morning the twelfth and 
last of the poems purporting to be by "Benj. F. John- 
son of Boone County." This author is Mr. James 
Whitcomb Riley, whose original purpose was to write 
a series of twelve, giving them the nominal author- 
ship he did in order the better to carry out his dialectic 
idea. How well the assumption has succeeded the 
country knows. Mr. Riley has written nothing among 
all his productions that has had so generous reception 
and wide reading as these poems. Those who have 
looked to the Saturday Journal for Benj. F. Johnson's 
quaint but truly poetic contributions, full of homely 
pictures and contented philosophy will miss them from 
our columns, but they will be repaid with other liter- 
ary work from Mr. Riley's muse. 

Lastly, John Boyle O'Reilly was pleased to say in 
his paper, the Boston Piloty that "a new name has 
recently appeared among Western poets, that of *Benj. 
F. Johnson, of Boone County, Indiana.' Several of his 
humorous and pathetic dialect poems have appeared 
in our paper. It now appears that this was a name 
assumed by a young poet already well known in an- 
other field, Mr. James Whitcomb Riley. We con- 
gratulate him on the strength which enabled him to 



156 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

win for two names a reputation that would satisfy 
many writers for one/' 

Thus the Hoosier Poet forsook his most popular 
nam de plume. He had been "given to this sort of 
thing" from the year he "discovered" the Poe Poem 
on the fly leaf of the old dictionary; never had been 
quite content to trust his own name ; to hazard his own 
fame. Whether his whim was a gracious fault is of 
little moment nov/. Only a few years passed before 
critics uniformly indorsed the judgment of the masses, 
as voiced by Newton Matthews, when Riley gave the 
"Benj. F. Johnson" poems permanent form in Negh- 
borly Poems : 

"All hail Ben Johnson of Boone, 

May the shade of him never grow less, — 
May his fiddle be ever in tune. 

To answer our hearts in distress ; 
May the lips of Dame Fortune still press 

His mouth warm as roses in June, 
And Fame, with old-fashioned caress 

Still fondle Ben Johnson of Boone." 



CHAPTER IX 

HIS FIRST BOOK 

IN the summer of 1882 the ''Johnson poems" were 
referred to, if not endorsed by, the Republican 
State Convention when one of the nominees was 
called on for a speech. He was a corpulent gentleman, 
dressed in a navy blue suit, with tight-fitting trousers 
and swallow-tailed coat, and when he came rolling to 
the front he said: *'l desire to thank this convention 
for the distinguished honor conferred upon me. You 
will observe, gentlemen, that I am not built for run- 
ning, but I hope to be able to travel fast enough to 
see m.any of you in your homes this fall, and keep up 
with the Democratic funeral. We'll win at the election 
— we'll get there — 'When the frost is on the punkin 
and the fodder's in the shock.' " (Roars of laughter 
and applause.) 

Obviously the delegates and the spectators had been 
reading the Boone County verses ; their author's audi- 
ence was assuming the proportions of a political party. 

As weeks sped along to the election and the New 
Year, inquiries began to come to Riley and the Journal 
office for the poems in book form. Now for ten years 
the poet had dreamed of a book. It is interestingly 
significant that he displayed real affection for a cer- 
tain book of verse even when he was too young to read 
— simply for the printing it contained. He liked after- 
ward to refer to this as his "first literary recollection. 

157 



158 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Before I was old enough to read," he said, "I remem- 
ber buying a book at an old auctioneer's shop in Green- 
field. I can not imagine what prophetic impulse took 
possession of me that I denied myself the ginger cakes 
and candy that usually exhausted my youthful income. 
The slender little volume must have cost all of twenty- 
five cents. It was Francis Quarles' Divine Emblems 
(first printed in England in 1635) — a neat little affair 
about the size of a pocket Testament. I carried it 
around with me all day long. It gave me delight to 
touch it." 

" 'What have you there, my boy?' a passer-by would 
ask. 

'' *A book/ I would answer. 

'' What kind of a book?' 

" Toetry-book.' 

"When asked if I could read poetry, I shook my head 
and turned away embarrassed — but I held on to my 
Poetry-book." 

*'I wrote and illustrated my first book — a book of 
nursery rhymes — in my vagabond days," Riley said on 
another occasion. "Even then I had a dim, distant 
idea that some day I would break into print with a 
real book. I dedicated these rhymes to my sister Mary, 
referring to them as my first and perhaps my last 
appearance in book form." 

All along the way he dreamed of a book, as indicated 
in his answer to some booksellers who had asked for 
his early poems in pamphlet form: 

Greenfield, Indiana, October 23, 1877. 
Gentlemen : 

Answering your inquiry of yesterday — I have never 
published a volume of any kind. Trusting however 



HIS FIRST BOOK 159 

some good future will accommodate our mutual de- 
sire, I am very truly yours, J. W. Riley. 

The ''good future" accommodated Riley in the sum- 
mer of 1883. It was a little book, fifty pages^ — "about 
the size of a pocket Testament." Its publication was 
chiefly due to Riley's wise friend and counselor, George 
C. Hitt, who for a quarter-century was associated with 
the Indianapolis Journal, Mr. Hitt had known the 
poet Riley and the man Riley intimately for a number 
of years, and was ever a helpful, a loyal and an inspir- 
ing friend. There were times in those days when Riley 
was quite unhappy away from Indianapolis, fearing 
that he might do something his friend would not 
approve. He was always glad of an opportunity to 
write him, for "forthwith," he said, "troops of blame- 
less thoughts came to heighten my happiness and self- 
respect." Mr. Hitt was his reliance when formal com- 
munications came from institutions of learning, which 
Riley (ignorant of conventional forms) knew not how 
to answer. "After vainly carpentering a whole half- 
day," he once remarked, "I went to Hitt, who knows 
how to do everything, and then, returning to my room, 
I answered my letter and went to sleep with clean 
hands and a clear conscience." 

Writing Hitt from Greenfield in January, 1883, the 
poet was certain the days were dealing kindly; "gen- 
erously, in fact," he said, "and though I do not deserve 
it, I am as glad as my colossal selfishness permits. I 
want this New Year to be as good to you as you have 
been to me." 

The title of the book — The Old Swimmin'-Hole and 
'Leven More Poems — Riley said was largely determined 



160 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

bj^ the public. In his readings he was nearly always 
introduced as the author of "The Old Swimmin'-Hole/' 
and since that poem was so widely and favorably 
known, it seemed in every way a fortunate choice. 
Also it was in spirit with the old farmer who had 
dictated the poems, and best of all it commemorated 
a scene in Hancock County that had been locally his- 
toric since the days of the Log' Cabin Campaign. 

No one has told the story of the book's publication 
so well as Mr. Hitt himself: "From July 17 to Sep- 
tember 12, of the previous year/' said he, "the twelve 
poems in the volume appeared at intervals in the 
Indianapolis Jovirnal. Locally they created a sensa- 
tion. When it became known that Mr. Riley was the 
author, there seemed to be a widespread demand that 
the work be put into some kind of book form, and I 
undertook to do it, merely as a friend. I was the 
business manager of the Journal and I knew the 
author intimately. He and I talked together fre- 
quentljT- about publication, but there did not appear to 
be any way to do it in Indianapolis, where there was, 
at that time, no book publishing house. 

"Finally, in the summer of 1883, I concluded to go to 
Cincinnati to try to interest the old and well-known 
publishing house of Robert Clarke and Company in 
the matter. My efforts were fruitless. They looked 
at the copy but declined to publish the book with their 
name on the title page. Nothing remained but to 
contract with them for one thousand copies, as a piece 
of job work, which I guaranteed to do. At their sug- 
gestion, w^hen we were discussing the title page, the 
name of George C. Hitt & Co. was used as the pub- 
lisher, simply to complete the form in the customary 



HIS FIRST BOOK 161 

manner. Mr. Riley, in this case, was the 'company/ 
and it was a partnership of which I have always been 
proud. 

"Robert Clarke and Company did a good piece of 
printing and carried out their part of the contract 
faithfully," concluded Mr. Hitt, '*but they let a golden 
opportunity pass when they refused to appear in com- 
pany with James Whitcomb Riley. That little edition 
of poems was the beginning of a phenomenal series of 
publications which have given Riley a national reputa- 
tion. When the first edition was quickly sold — ^that 
part of the business was done by me at the Journal 
office — not desiring to continue posing as a publisher, 
I turned the copyright over to Merrill, Meigs and Com- 
pany, Indianapolis, made a contract with them for a 
second edition, which was a facsimile of the first, 
except for a red border around the pages, and retired 
as a book publisher forever." 

The poems, clipped from the Journal^ were pasted 
on sheets of paper, a poem to a page, and the Robert 
Clarke Company, seeing that the manuscript had been 
hastily put together and that the poems were in dialect, 
declined to permit "the stamp of their house" to appear 
on what seemed to them an undignified collection of 
inferior verse. Rather than disappoint the poet, Mr. 
Hitt consented to masquerade temporarily as pub- 
lisher, little realizing that he was involving himself in 
correspondence vdth other authors concerning publica- 
tion of their manuscripts, and that one day the firm 
of George C. Hitt and Company would appear in Pool's 
index along with the great publishing houses of the 
country. 

In connection with the publication were such items 



162 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

of interest as the following : Riley went to Cincinnati 
to read the proof — the book was bound in imitation 
of parchment or vellum — ^total number of books given 
away, one hundred and three — twenty books returned 
— retail price fifty cents — total cost of printing and 
copyright, $131 — ^total profit from the one thousand 
copies, $166.40 — Riley says Hitt generously turned 
over to him all the profit — Hitt says they divided 
equally, and the latter is the authority — Hitt made all 
the arrangements for the second edition, securing for 
Riley a generous royalty, with copyright in the poet's 
name. 

Thus the poet, faithfully working by day in the 
Journal office, and at night in his small, scantily fur- 
nished room across the street, began to build a fair 
future on "a small beginning" — a little pocket edition 
of poems, which has since been sought by collectors 
from ocean to ocean. After the lapse of an average 
lifetime one reads his simple foreword with pleasure 
and affection : 

PREFACE. 

As far back into boyhood as the writer's memory 
may intelligently go, the ''country poet" is most 
pleasantly recalled. He was, and is, as common as 
the "country fiddler," and as full of good old-fashioned 
music. Not a master of melody, indeed, but a poet, 
certainly — 

"Who, through long days of labor, 
And nights devoid of ease, 
Still heard in his soul the music 
Of wonderful melodies." 

And it is simply the purpose of this series of dialec- 
tic Studies to reflect the real worth of this homely 



HIS FIRST BOOK 163 

child of Nature, and to echo faithfully, if possible, the 
faltering music of his song. 

J. W. R. 
Indianapolis, Ind., 

July, 1883. 

The reader even turns over the leaf gently that his 
eye may linger on the table of 

CONTENTS. 

The Old Swimmin'-Hole 9 

Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer . 13 

A Summer's Day 17 

A Hymb of Faith 20 

Worter-Melon-Time 23 

My Phiiosofy 28 

When The Frost Is on the PUnkin . . 31 

On the Death of Little Mahala Ashcraft 34 

The Mulberry Tree 37 

To My Old Neghbor, William Leachman 40 

My Fiddle 46 

The Clover 49 

Riley "set the little skiff afloat on the waves of 
public life," he said, *'with trepidation. I had no way 
of knowing its fate. Making a book, you know, is the 
most ticklish, unsafe and hazardous of all professions. 
I was reminded of the preface in Tales of the Oceans 
the old book which fed my hunger for stories in child- 
hood. Its author laid no claim to literary excellence, 
and was prepared for rough handling from the critics ; 
but he claimed to know 'every rope in the ship,* to be 
familiar v^ath nautical life, just as I claimed to know 
the things in Hoosier life, of which my old farmer had 
been singing. When my book began to sell from the 



164 JAMES WHITCOMB EILEY 

Journal counting-rooms, I knew that its sails were 
spread, like those for the old Ocean Tales, and that its 
streamers were gaily flying, but whether it would meet 
with prosperous breezes or have to struggle with ad- 
verse gales and perhaps founder in stormy seas, yet 
remained concealed in the womb of time." 

The poet's misgivings were brief. Almost imme- 
diately the public invested "the larger part of a trade 
dollar in the humor and pathos of the book," and after 
reading the verses, like Oliver Twist, asked for more. 
Years after, Riley incorporated the little book without 
change in Neghhorly Poems, the first volume of his 
complete edition. 

In July, 1883, Riley assured his old-time comrade, 
Samuel Richards, who was then an art student in 
Munich, that the Hoosier Poet was "building more 
fame than fortune, though the last — God speed it — 
would surely overtake him soon. Find enclosed a 
review of my recent book," he wrote, "a little unpre- 
tentious sort o' venture in Hoosier dialect which I feel 
sure will please you, however it may fail with the 
general public, though, so far, it seems to be striking 
home there, as well ; and the Top Literati of America 
is just now storming me with letters of congratula- 
tions. 0, my man, our little old visionary specula- 
tions along the ragged river banks at Anderson are 
going to materialize after all!" 

Of course the critics did not become an extinct 
species when "The Old Swimmin'-Hole" appeared in 
book form, but their infrequent stings were mollified 
by the congratulations from many distinguished men 
and women. The little book was the beginning of a 
warm' friendship with Mark Twain, who in succeeding 



HIS FIRST BOOK 165 

years often sent a word of good will to his Indiana 
favorite, once, while in Vienna, addressing an en- 
velope to 

Mr. James Whitcomb Riley 

Poet & a dern capable one, too, 

Indianapolis, Indiana, 

U. S. of America. 

The book "filled a lovely afternoon" for Robert 
Burdette. Edith M. Thomas was glad it had begun 
"to rain prosperity in the Hoosier Poet's latitude." If 
Riley was encouraged by one word more than another, 
it was the favorable comment of the author of Castilian 
Daysy who wrote from 

Cleveland, November 7, 1883. 
Dear Mr. Riley : 

I have received and read with great pleasure the 
book of poems you were so good as to send me. They 
have a distinct and most agreeable flavor, which is 
entirely their own. I particularly like "When the 
Frost is on the Punkin" and "Worter-Melon-Time." 
Thanking you sincerely for remembering me, I am. 
Very truly yours, 

John Hay. 

Puck found a copy of The Old Sivimmin'-Hole and 
"it was as good as a swim to read it." Robert Under- 
wood Johnson of the Century Magazine was "very 
much in sympathy with its substance." There was, 
however, "a tendency to over-dramatize the close of 
a poem," and in several instances Johnson confessed 
to a desire to draw a pencil through a final stanza. 
He wondered at Riley's power to compress "so much 
genuine human nature into so small a space." 



166 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Here began Riley's gratitude to the Century^ s editor 
for waking him up to the necessity of carefully scruti- 
nizing and revising his poems before including them in 
his books. *'There is no resting-place for an author/" 
he said to a friend, "when once in public favor, and 
the higher the favor the more expected of him. Never 
should he let his ambition limp. He should be his own 
severest critic, so that when a poem gets past his own 
censure, he can bet on its passing safely through the 
public gauntlet."' Answering the Century from "the 
banks of Deer Creek,"' where he was sojourning with 
a friend, he wrote as follows : 

Delphi, Indiana, August 28, 1883. 
Dear Mr. Johnson: 

The frank, direct way in which you comment on my 
work pleases and makes me especially thankful to you. 
You are right as to my tendency to over-dramatize the 
culminations and I will try to avoid the error in the 
future, though it will be no trifling matter to make 
the correction. I believe strict art demands exaggera- 
tion, but to attain and control the nice quality and 
quantity of it is the rub. When you speak of the 
"genuine human nature'" that you find in my at- 
tempts, I am encouraged to go on. 

With your letter came one from Joel Chandler Har- 
ris, whose estimate, I think you will be glad to know, 
corresponds most happily with your own. 

Most cordially and gratefully yours, 

James W. Riley. 

His answer to Harris — the next day and from the 
same address — was also the beginning of one of the 
most affectionate as well as one of the rarest relations 
that fortune permits men of letters to enjoy. Harris 
had written that Riley had "caught the true American 



HIS FIRST BOOK 167 

spirit and flavor." The Hoosier poems were distinct- 
ive, and, he added, "they will bring you distinction/' 

Delphi, Indiana, August 29, 1883. 
Dear Mr. Harris : 

Your recent good letter, favoring my literary ven- 
tures, should have received a prompter reply than 
this, but I have been skurrying fretfully about the 
country, with no breathing space till now. 

It pleases me greatly to see, what seems, at least, 
evidence of newer and worthier ambitions in our 
present writers. The old classic splints are being 
loosened and taken off, as it were, and our modern 
authors are striking straight out from the shoulder. 
I would rather have you call my verse Nature and 
American than this hour find myself the author of 
*'Queen Mary." While not a howling dervish in the 
patriotic line, I can truly say of the right scream of 
the Eagle, *1 like it ; it has a soul-stirring sound" ; and 
I believe we are at last coming upon the proper spirit 
of this voice in literature. 

Cordially and gratefully yours, 

James W. Riley. 

Along with the congratulations came requests for 
the new western poet's biography. One magazine 
asked for — Name in full — ^where born — where educated 
— when graduated — prominent positions — college de- 
grees — author of what books? 

Myron Reed was quick to see what a ridiculous 
fig-ure the **full dress" magazine would make of the 
Hoosier Poet. Clipping a facetious description of Riley 
from an exchange, part of Eugene Field's, he answered 
as follows: "Our poet looks like a dapper young 
Episcopal clergyman. His hair is yellowish, his eyes 
china blue, and his complexion pallid. He wears no 



168 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

beard nor mustache. He has the prominent nose of a 
successful jurist, and the tragedian brow, but his 
mouth is the ideal mouth of a comedian. In conversa- 
tion his voice has the genuine Hoosier twang, with 
certain intonations that are strongly suggestive of the 
Yankee. He has published a book of poems, and con- 
templates a volume of short stories — ^the first work of 
the kind he has ever done." 

Riley was more facetious than Reed about his his- 
tory, but at the last had not the courage to send his 
own sketch to the "Top Literati." "You ask me for 
my life," he wrote a friend in Nebraska, "but I'd 
rather give you my money. I was thirty-one years 
old last spring was a year ago. I am a blond of fair 
complexion, with an almost ungovernable appetite for 
brunettes; am five feet six in height, though last State 
Fair I was considerably higher than that — in fact, I 
was many times taken for Old High Lonesome as I 
went about my daily walk. I am a house, sign, and 
ornamental painter by trade — graining, marking, gild- 
ing, etching, etc. Used to make lots of money, but 
never had any on hand. It all evaporated in some 
mysterious way. My standard weight is 135, and 
when I am placed in solitary confinement for life I 
Will eat onions passionately. Bird seed I never touch. 

"My father is a lawyer and lured me into his office 
once for a three months' penance, but I made good my 
escape and under cover of the friendly night I fled up 
the pike with a patent-medicine concert wagon and had 
a good time for two or three of the happiest years of 
my life. Next I struck a country paper and tried to 
edit, but the proprietor wanted to do that, and wouldn't 
let me, and in about a year I quit trying and let him 



HIS FIRST BOOK 169 

have his own way, and now it's the hardest thing in 
the world for me to acknowledge that he is still an 
editor and a most successful one. Later I went back 
home to Greenfield, and engaged in almost everything 
but work, and so became quite prominent. Noted 
factions and public bodies began to regard me atten- 
tively, and no grand jury was complete without my 
presence. I wasn't considered wholly lost, however, 
till I began to publish poetry — ^brazenly affixing my 
own name to it. But I couldn't get any money for it, 
although stranger editors wrote letters of praise re- 
garding it. Then I sent a little of it to two or three 
real poets East, and they commended it, and I showed 
their letters and have been paid ever since. Still I am 
not rich. A skating rink proprietor who yearns to be 
a poet should be regarded with suspicion." 

It must be evident to the reader that the Hoosier 
Poet in this sketch, as in many other remarks about 
himself, evaded the poetic label, and declined to be 
classified, at least as literary. "He is emphatically not 
a poet of the schools," wrote Anna Nicholas, "though 
many of his productions are of classic beauty and per- 
fection." Neither he nor his poems were by nature 
made to fit into dignified pigeonholes. In pen-pictures 
drawn in his latter years he is sometimes described as 
a man who had all the polish of social and college 
experience. After he received his university degree, 
friends sought seriously to dignify him by addressing 
him "Doctor Riley." The attempt was vain. Titles 
were foreign to him ; he belonged to the wide world of 
democracy. It was distinction enough to occupy his 
own place — somewhere in the line between his Boone 
County countryman and that "prime example of the 



170 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

best characteristics and ideals of the Anglo-Saxon 
race," Abraham Lincoln. 

It is true that in his last years he was less given, 
and naturally enough, to the delicious abandon that 
characterized him in the prime of life ; but he was not 
then the *'Benjamin F. Johnson of Boone, whooping 
along to other engagements, writing at a gallop with 
a thousand things to say and not time enough for five 
hundred," — not the Riley of that prolific period when 
songs bubbled forth at the rate of two a day. Then 
and in his earlier youth he had an almost divine spon- 
taneity. He was gaiety incarnate; often "excessively 
and delightfully silly." Of him it may be said, as it 
was said of Stevenson, that "a child-like mirth leaped 
and danced in him ; he seemed to skip the hills of life ; 
he simply bubbled with quips and jest." "Often when 
writing at night," to say it in his own words, "I 
laughed aloud, overjoyed with what the Muse had 
brought me." He had his moments of depression, of 
course, when he was a solemn youth, but the moments 
were not frequent. Of a truth, to know him was to 
love him and to laugh and smile with him. 

The story of Riley's first book, so it has been said, 
would make a fitting companion to those discouraging 
experiences of Bret Harte, Jerome, Zangwill and Zola, 
who worked their way to recognition "by hard knocks 
that would have taken the respiration out of ordinary 
men and women." The statement is slightly exagger- 
ated. The hard knocks came to Riley before his first 
book. When it was printed the bitter waters had been 
passed. It was the turning of the tide. After it the 
poet's ways, as far as book publication is concerned, 



HIS FIRST BOOK 171 

were mostly ways of peace. It proved to be the lark 
at sunrise, the harbinger of sixteen volumes. 

The book has another claim on our attention. By it 
Riley became **the most discovered man in existence. 
Scores who bought it," said he, ''claimed to have dis- 
covered me to the world. How unshaken each was in 
his belief that the puny, unpretentious tome had made 
the name and fame of the Hoosier Poet, and that he 
(the discoverer) had foreseen it all in the misty days 
of my wanderings!" A few discoverers, however, 
were genuine, Mary Hartwell Catherwood for one, who 
saw Riley "moving on magnificently" ; who, five years 
before, when he wrote the "Flying Islands," was cer- 
tain he "would rise to a pinnacle in the literary 
world." 

In an important sense, as Burdette expressed it, "No 
one discovered the poet. For seven years Riley had 
kept the wheels revolving — some said without the slip 
of a cog, which was untrue — but the wheels had been 
turning. He had looked to himself and to Providence 
for success, and not to Congress or the state legis- 
lature." He had done a vast deal more work than his 
nearest friends dreamed. Although masquerading in 
his book as a farmer, he was also a poet for men of 
the city. He had tried to be as true to them as they 
to him. The people had said of his songs. This is our 
music ; this is part of what we are. 



CHAPTER X 

ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 

CHARLES DICKENS was known almost as well 
by his public readings as by his books. Such, 
at least, was the popular opinion for many years 
after the novelist's last American tour. In London, 
when a young man, he had read from The Chimes to a 
few British artists and authors, among them Thomas 
Carlyle, whose grave attention weighed heavily in the 
balance when Dickens set his heart definitely on the 
platform. *'I am thinking," he remarked early in his 
career, "that an author reading from his own books 
would take immensely." 

He did take immensely. Better yet. In after years, 
as he sat in his quiet room, he had the dear memory 
of a people, whom he never afterward recalled as a 
mere public audience, but "a host of personal friends." 

All this and more had made a deep impression on 
Riley. So alluring indeed had been the account that 
he almost lost sight of the difficulties that lined the 
way to the platform. 

In England the opinion was quite general that the 
dramatic profession had lost an eminent name when 
Dickens failed to adopt the stage. A similar opinion 
concerning Riley prevailed in Indiana the year of his 
first book venture, so successful had he been as a public 
reader. 

172 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 173 

Up to 1883, and for several years after, Riley was 
strongly of the opinion that poetry did not pay, and 
it is not a wild exaggeration to say that no one was 
more surprised and pleased than he was when it did 
pay. He usually gave four reasons for his remaining 
on the platform, in spite of advice to the contrary 
from some of his literary contemporaries. 

1. His resolve to make his own living. 

2. His hunger to produce poems that would ring 
true to the hearts of the people. 

3. His purpose to give wider circulation to his 
poems. 

4. His desire to make people happy. 

There was also the hope that public readings would 
help him to find a publisher. "My first book," he 
wrote a young writer, *1 sent East (down to Cincin- 
nati was East) where even my sponsor could not give 
it away — could not get them to look at it — ^much less 
print it on any terms but job rates — same as my 
ordering so many hundred placards and whackin' down 
every blessed penny — ^which every blessed penny I did 
not have to whack. So I turned my attention to as 
nearly a practical vocation as I could (public reading) , 
hoping to widen my reputation until I should be known 
to the general public — ^then only could I hope my name 
would secure a publisher to help me out. And never 
till within the last year has any notable publisher made 
me an offer that involved a possible hope of my making 
a dollar. True, I have had here a local audience that 
at last began to pay me for the venture in book form 
that I took into my own hands. My present publishers 
take my books and give me a royalty. Simply, the 
whole thing involves infinite time and patience and 



174 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

wholesome bravery, and is variously rounded into suc- 
cess after many years/' 

Fortunately there is extant the testimony of the 
old-time colleague and first publisher, who was also 
the poet's manager in those transitional years: **The 
present generation does not know," wrote Mr. Hitt in 
1907, ''it can not know the greatness of Mr. Riley as a 
reader. He developed that talent as his genius grew 
in poetry, and for years before he found a public to 
buy and enjoy his books, he had charmed multitudes 
with readings from his own work. In fact this outlet 
was for him a most natural one, because he was a born 
actor as well as a poet. His imagination drifted easily 
into dramatic channels, and what he saw and heard as 
a boy among the homely, wholesome people of Indiana 
he later transmuted into poetry, and unconsciously 
began to impersonate the characters that marshaled 
themselves in his fertile brain. Many of his well- 
known poems were offered to Indiana audiences long 
before they got into print, and nearly all his humorous 
prose sketches were familiar to his friends here at 
home before they delighted audiences elsewhere. His 
best poems were first printed in the newspapers, and 
were widely copied; but he was even then strong on 
the platform as the interpreter of his own product. 
The lecture bureaus finally awoke to the fact that he 
was desirable, and for season after season he had for 
his field most of the United States." 

In his own inimitable fashion the poet once reviewed 
somewhat at length his career as a public reader, and 
that with Mr. Hitt's sympathetic corroboration should 
silence those, if any still exist, who look askance on 
his platform achievements: "In boyhood," Riley said, 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 175 

"I had been vividly impressed with Dickens' success 
in reading from his own works, and dreamed that some 
day I might follow his example. At first I read at 
Sunday-school entertainments, and later on special 
occasions such as Memorial Days and Fourth of Julys. 
At last I mustered up sufficient courage to read in a 
city theater, where, despite the conspiracy of a rainy 
night and a circus, I got encouragement enough to lead 
me to extend my efforts. And so, my native state and 
then the country at large were called upon to bear 
with me, and I think every sequestered spot north or 
south particularly distinguished for poor railroad con- 
nections. 

"All this time I had been writing whenever there 
was any strength left in me. I could not resist the 
inclination to vnrite. It was what I most enjoyed 
doing. And so I wrote, laboriously ever, more often 
using the rubber end of the pencil than the point. 

*^In my readings I had an opportunity to study and 
find out for myself what the public wants, and after- 
ward I would endeavor to use the knowledge gained in 
my writing. Myron Reed used to say to me, *A poet 
should ride in an omnibus, not in a cab.' Reed knew 
my need, for he stood near the public heart. The 
public desires nothing but what is absolutely natural, 
and so perfectly natural as to be fairly artless. It 
can not tolerate affectation, and it takes little interest 
in the classical production. It demands simple senti- 
ments that come direct from the heart. While on the 
lecture platform I watched the effect that my readings 
had on the audience very closely and whenever any- 
body left the hall I knew that my recitation was at 
fault and tried to find out why. Once a man and his 



176 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

wife made an exit while I was giving 'The Happy- 
Little Cripple' — a recitation I had prepared with par- 
ticular enthusiasm and satisfaction. It fulfilled, as 
few poems do, all the requirements of length, climax 
and those many necessary features for a recitation. 
The subject was a theme of real pathos, beautified by 
the cheer and optimism of the little sufferer. Conse- 
quently when this couple left the hall I was very 
anxious to know the reason and asked a friend to find 
out. He learned that they had a little hunch-back 
child of their own. After this experience I never used 
that recitation again. On the other hand, it often 
required a long time for me to realize that the public 
would enjoy a poem which, because of some blind 
impulse, I thought unsuitable. A man once suggested 
'When the Frost Is on the Punkin.' The use of it had 
never occux^red to me, for I thought it 'wouldn't go.' 
He persuaded me to try it and it became one of 
my most favored recitations. Thus, I learned to 
judge and value my verses by their effect upon the 
public. 

** Occasionally, at first, I had presumed to write 'over 
the heads' of the audience, consoling myself over their 
cool reception by thinking my auditors were not of 
sufficient intellectual height to appreciate my efforts. 
But after a time it came home to me that I myself 
was at fault in these failures, and then I disliked any- 
thing that did not appeal to the public and learned to 
discriminate between that which did not ring true to 
the hearts of my hearers and that which won them by 
virtue of its sunple truthfulness." 

Riley's success beyond the borders of his native state 
dates from his first reading in Boston, "the city of 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 177 

twisting streets," he called it after being lost in them. 
His week there, friends said, was a grand investment 
for his whole career. He had dreamed of reading from 
the Tremont Temple rostrum ever since Dickens had 
triumphed there thirteen years before. He realized his 
dream the first Tuesday evening in January, 1882, 
appearing in his lecture on 'Toetry and Character/' 
as an extra attraction in the Bible Union Course. 
"Success absolute," he wired his physician in Indiana. 
"Remain over Saturday, the guest of the first literary 
Club of America." 

That night the Boston Transcript made a discovery. 
*'Mr. Riley is not only a genuine poet," wrote the 
editor, "but he possesses the rare power in recitation 
of conveying his own feelings to his audience. He has 
not been spoiled by any of the schools of oratory, but 
reads from the heart. He has fine poetic instinct, a 
keen sense of humor, good presence, a pleasant, flexible 
voice, clear, distinct utterance and remarkable power 
of facial expression — a strong combination of qualities, 
essential for one in his profession, and which should 
make him a strong card with the bureaus, and an 
especial favorite with the public." 

An Indiana exchange congratulated Boston on its 
ability to discover without circumlocution the brilliant 
abilities of the Hoosier Poet. It also congratulated 
Riley on his Boston triumph. "Wherever," it said, "in 
the broad land the people are capable of appreciating 
good things, J. W. Riley will be immensely popular, 
and now that 'his bark is on the sea,' we wish him 
everywhere Boston receptions and ovations." 

He arrived in the city a few days before the lecture, 
as seen in his prompt letter to Mr. Hitt, dated 



178 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Tremont House, Boston, January 1, 1882. 
Dear George: 

Everything is well, and I am going to "make it" — 
dead sure! I have been very flatteringly received, 
and the letters I brought are of much importance. 
With them yesterday I was piloted around to a won- 
derful extent — meeting not only notables to whom 
they were addressed, but "boosted" on by the recipients 
till I knew everybody of the ilk — all who were not out 
of town. The Transcript did not need an introduc- 
tion — remembering me without, and~I am glad to as- 
sure you — with some little enthusiasm. I met Oliver 
Optic yesterday — a very boy-like old man, who already 
had a ticket to my show. John Boyle O'Reilly was 
out of town but is back to-morrow. Positively assured 
of an audience of at least two thousand people — the 
best. Longfellow himself would come, he told me, but 
that his physicians are just now restricting his gam- 
bolings. Dan Macauley and I saw the grand old man 
yesterday, in spite of the doctors who have tried to 
shut the world away from him. He was very, very 
gracious, and complimented me beyond all hope of ex- 
pression. Can not tell you anything now — wait till 
I return with the laurels on me brow. 

There are many peculiar features about Boston. I 
have seen Beacon Street, the Old South Church, Bos- 
ton Common, and the Bridge where Longfellow stood 
at midnight, when the clocks were giving the thing 
away, and so forth. 

As ever, J. W. R. 

Subsequently Riley remarked that he had had many 
audiences indulgent enough to listen graciously to what 
he had to offer, and that he had been flattered and 
confused too with the expressions of their favor, but 
never before had he felt so unworthy of attention or 
commendation as when reciting a poem in Longfellow's 
presence. 




Old Seminary Homestead, Greenfield— the "Crow's Nest." 
The center window on the second floor was where the Poet worked 




KiNGRY's Milt, wheee Pioneeks "Tuck Theie Grindin' " m the 
Fai;l of Forty-three 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 179 

The unwritten portion of the poet's Boston visit and 
the honors paid him were in some respects more 
marked and important than his reception by the public 
audience — ^his ''glorious yacht ride" down the harbor 
and his first view of the ocean at old Fort Warren, and 
other happenings. He had letters of introduction from 
Myron Reed to Trowbridge and Wendell Phillips. He 
especially admired Phillips, and one shares his dis- 
appointment when he failed to meet him. In his later 
years he carried Reed's Temple Talks in his valise 
VT'hen on the road, that he might read and reread the 
essay on Phillips. Reed's letter of introduction was 
strikingly characteristic : 

THE JOURNAL. 

Indianapolis, December 26, 1881. 
Wendell Phillips — Boston. 

Dear Sir: This will be presented to you by my 
friend, James W. Riley, who visits Boston by appoint- 
ment of "The Redpath Bureau" and will make a tour 
in and about New England. We think highly of Mr. 
Riley and hope and indeed expect that he will please 
the people of the East. Please to give Mr. Riley such 
advice as will help him in getting hold. He is a 
native of Indiana and his prose and poetry are of the 
soil of this region but so thoroughly human that I 
think he will succeed anywhere. 

With much respect, 

Myron W. Reed. 

"Last night," Riley wrote Hitt in boyish glee, "the 
president of the Papyrus Club drove around for me in 
a carriage on runners, and glanced me down to the 
St. Botolph Club, where they were entertaining the 



180 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Tile Club. It was glorious. There I met Howells, 
Aldrich, and a host of other celebrities." 

In another letter to Hitt, the poet and Boston were 
becoming acquainted. "What makes a place lovable is 
being welcomed in it, and made thoroughly at home," 
he wrote. "I can not begin to tell you how dear to me 
old Boston is. It did not, just at first, seem to thor- 
oughly appreciate the honor I was doing it, but now it 
is 'catching on,' and we are mutually looking over each 
other's shortcomings, knowing each other better daj^ 
by day. I have a most pressing invitation to join the 
Papyrus Club at their anniversary banquet. I am 
destined to meet every potentate in the town. Just 
think of it ! Men are bred and grown up here, through 
all gradations of development, with no other object 
than to work their final way into this Club — and fail 
and fade and droop away and die without accomplish- 
ing their object — and here I come and sidle in and do 
not even try — can't help myself." 

There were surprises all round. His audiences could 
scarcely believe that the Hoosier Poet was the author 
of his recitations. James Boyle O'Reilly, a brother 
poet, was surprised at the impression his western 
friend made on distinguished men. "After a few days* 
visit," said he, "Riley left Boston with the conviction 
in the minds of all who met him that the West has a 
poet who has power in him to win a national reputa- 
tion." 

Although there was little to discount in Boston, ill 
winds blew when he left the city to fill other New 
England engagements. Two weeks as "a frost-bitten 
pilgrim" in a strange land ended in sighs for home, 
as seen in portions of a private letter from Boston : 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE ^EIGHTIES 181 

''To begin with, I like Boston, as you know, but New 
England — ? Of course I see it — what I see of it — in 
the most unlovely season; but it strikes me as the 
coldest, bleakest, barrenest and most forbidding coun- 
try on earth. I would not die here for one hundred 
and fifty dollars a night. I would rather die in mid- 
ocean, with a bull shark for my burial casket. I used 
to think it was cold there at home, but it is May there 
now, I know, and I want to be queen of it. I want to 
wade in mud. I want to stroll up and down Washing- 
ton Street (Indianapolis) in a rain-storm, with only a 
smile to cover me. Positively I am very homesick, but 
have only a pull now of a week or so further — then I 
will shake the everlasting snows from my feet, and 
get back to Indiana like a four-time winner. 

"Every day and night, while in the city here, is 
crowded 'full of rare delights ; but that only serves to 
heighten the lonesome, cheerless, dreary, weary experi- 
ences in the country. And, talk of the country! I 
tell you there is a country town here every mile-post 
and each one of them, to me, more desolate and unin- 
viting than the last. My last experience, for instance : 
After leaving Boston, with only a sandwich and a gulp 
of coffee for breakfast, I rode and rode and rode, 
making 'three separate and distinct changes' of cars, 
with only time enough between changes to fall down 
once or twice between depots, at last alighting, at 
three-thirty o'clock, at the station where I was to take 
the stage for final destination. No hotel in the town — 
no anything but snow — and an hour to wait for the 
'stage/ an open sleigh drawn by a horse with fur on 
him instead of hair, and a man to drive him, dressed 
like an Esquimau, with a fur cap pulled down over his 



182 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ears till all communication was stopped, and the gift 
of talking being rapidly forgotten. For ten miles I 
froze in silence, and through the glaze over my eyes 
could just make out the church was lighted ready for 
the lecture as we drove into town. Then up at six 
next morning, in order to back-track and make the 
train in time for the next point. 

"Sometimes, however, the experiences are pleas- 
anter. One night last week, for instance, only a half- 
hour out of the city, was an engagement at Salem. 
And Josh Billings was in, with a night off, and so went 
with me ; and we went early and 'researched' the city's 
archives, for was it not there that, in the good old 
colonial days, they used to 'work off' witches? So we 
visited the scenes of the old-time horror. And we saw 
the original death warrants of the condemned, and 
listened to some of the very clever tests of how a witch 
was proved. It seems that they meant business in 
those old Puritanic days. And among other sacred 
relics, too, we saw a little phial of pins — ^ten pins, as 
I counted them (note how our modern game dates 
back), ten little, msty, round-headed brass pins, cor- 
roded and green with the scum of centuries. And these 
pins were once displayed before the wise officials of 
Cotton Mather's time as having been plucked from the 
flesh of little children and other innocent victims of 
the Goody Coles of that day — still preserved, as Bill- 
ings sagely remarked, *as a kind o' religious soovner 
uf the days, witch is no more.' " 

To speak truth Riley did return to his native state 
''a four-time winner." The East was no longer a 
sealed book. His old home paper {The Hancock Demo- 
crat) put another mark on the calendar of his progress. 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 183 

Greenfield was glad that Boston had crowned him with 
laurels, and that his star was in the ascendent. 

Always there was the unselfish service of the beloved 
Burdette. *lf the house that greets Riley is half so 
large as his lecture is twice as good," he wrote a com- 
mittee, "people's feet will stick out the dormer win- 
dows. My word for it, after hearing him you will 
want him to come back again and again." In June, 
1881, he wrote the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, recom- 
mending his friend as the rising star on the humorous 
platform, thus "working" the poet into the Redpath 
list with such conspicuous stars as Wendell Phillips — 
John B. Gough — David Swing — Major Henry Dane — 
Mary A. Livermore — Robert Colly er — Josh Billings — 
and Russell H. Conwell. To consort with that list was 
a new experience in the life of the Hoosier Poet; but 
so it happened, his name (in alphabetical order) 
appearing near that of David Swing — "JAMES W. 
RILEY, Humorist and Dialect Reader, in his original 
impersonations, character sketches, and studies from 
real life." 

The poet was now fully awake to the opportunity 
afforded him in this wider field. He had been told in 
Boston that he possessed the attributes of actor and 
author — a rare combination. It was within his power, 
Josh Billings had said, "to move an audience to any 
emotion he desired. His voice was musical, whether 
attuned to laughter or tears. He was not a poor 
mumbler of words." Some authors as they approach 
the footlights, Billings went on to say, "remind their 
audience of an undertaker. They read from their own 
works in a voice solemn as a cow-bell after dark. Riley 
will avoid such as he would a pestilence.'* 



184 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

In February, 1882, under the auspices of the Red- 
path Bureau, the poet was *'off for a series of readings" 
in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Chief interest 
centered in the Star Course of Philadelphia^ — a triple 
entertainment in the Academy of Music, by Josh Bill- 
ings, Burdette, the Hawkeye Man, and the Hoosier 
Poet. "It was a sparkling night," said Riley; "some- 
thing to remember a hundred years." He recalled 
Billings pleasantly, his rugged brow and long iron-gray 
hair tossed back "like the mane of a lion," how he 
sauntered negligently across the stage and dropped 
into a chair and spread his handkerchief on his knee 
and moistened his finger-tips; and how the old hero 
of the rostrum began in trembling voice to drop those 
rough gems of wisdom that so often resembled the 
proverbs of Franklin. 

Burdette's part of the program was to "make a few 
dry hits" in introducing Riley to the Quaker City 
audience. "Indiana," he said, "has frequently and 
widely been known more for what it is not than for 
what it is. Too often in the splendors of our gilded 
and barbarous Orient, we have used Hoosierdom as a 
synonym for verdancy and a low state of civilization 
and culture. Do you know that Indiana was vaccinated 
for colleges years ago and that it took splendidly all 
over the state? Do you know that there are five col- 
leges on or near the Monon railroad, the slowest line 
in the state? I have no doubt all the trunk lines have 
more colleges. They must have. Do you know that 
Indiana has a better system^ of turnpikes than Penn- 
sylvania? Do you know that Indiana put its foot down 
on tariff for revenue only? Do you know that our 
Conestoga farmers are turning their soil with Indiana 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 185 

plows, and hauling their products to market in Stude- 
baker wagons? But the best thing Indiana ever did 
for this audience was to take from the Indianapolis 
Journal sanctum, and send here to-night for our in- 
struction and entertainment Mr. James Whitcomb 
Riley, whom I now have the pleasure and honor of 
introducing." 

Riley's contribution was, in part, the lecture given 
in Boston. His poems were in dialect, he said, but he 
hoped "they would survive the fleeting favor of to- 
day." According to the press report "he proved him- 
self not only a poet of genuine merit, but a speaker of 
rare ability, and the audience gave ample evidence of 
its appreciation of him in both capacities." 

The wider field required lithographs, posters and 
new testimonials. The author of the lecture on "Milk" 
contributed (in "reformed spelling") to his friend's 
welfare as follows : 

Salem, Mass., January 17, 1883. 
Deer Publik: I take extreem delite in introdusing 2 
yure imediate notis mi yung and handsum frend, Mr. 
James Whit Kum Riley, who iz a phunny man of 
purest ray screen. He iz the only man i kno that 
plays his own hand, or, in wurds less profeshonal, the 
only man that gives his own produxions, and not other 
folks'. He iz phunnier than tung kan tell. 
Yures vdthout a struggle. 

Josh Billings. 

There was scarcely a town of five thousand in- 
habitants in New York and New England where Bill- 
ings had not lectured, where an audience had not seen 
"the celebrated glass of milk on the stand, to which he 
never alluded." He heightened the demand for Riley 



186 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

in that field. On the occasion of his death two years 
later, Riley gave expression to his gratitude in verse: 

*' Jolly-hearted old Josh Billings, 
With his v^isdom and his wit, 
And his gravity of presence. 
And the drollery of it! 

"Though we lose him^ still we find him 

In the mirth of every lip, 
And we fare through all his pages 
In his glad companionship. 

**His voice is wed with Nature's, 
Laughing in each woody nook 
With the chirrup of the robin 
And the chuckle of the brook/' 

The new field required a new lecture, if new scaf- 
folding for old reading selections constituted a new 
lecture. He gave the lecture the unlettered title, *'Eli 
and How He Got There.'' It drew ''crowded houses 
down East,'' but it was his poems that won the ap- 
plause, not what he said in prose between them. The 
scaffolding of the lecture lacked strength of structure 
so that it was likely to fall to pieces. *'How Eli Got 
There," said one who heard it, might as well have 
been anything else, since the entertainment consisted 
of recitations, which were as popular before he wrote 
the lecture as they were after it. 

It was the general opinion of those who heard the 
lecture that the poet impaired its good effect by reading 
it. ''If there is an individual in the universe," an 
editor wrote, "with moral heroism and courage enough 
to take Riley to one ,side and force him to commit it, 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 187 

that individual will confer a lasting favor upon lecture- 
goers and Riley himself, by proceeding to set the 
thumb-screws in motion at once." As it turned out, 
the editor was the one individual who set the screws 
in motion. The poet promptly memorized the lecture. 

But still it was defective. He talked learnedly, ''at 
least made a show at it," he said, about famous gen- 
erals, distinguished scientists and enormous birds. 
Sometimes he gave more particulars, for example, 
when telling about the albatross — how it was the 
largest of oceanic birds, how it could follow ships for 
days without resting, and how sailors, rounding Cape 
Horn, had seen it asleep on heaving billows, with its 
head under its wing. All very beautiful and interest- 
ing, but the poet was not the man to tell it. What had 
he to do with those splendid birds of the southern seas? 
Let him stay at home with the bluebird and the pewee. 
Let us have less of Huxley and Hannibal, was the 
hearers' desire, and more of Benjamin F. Johnson of 
Boone. 

He told for the first time "The Old Soldier's Story"— 
how a gallant private carried a wounded comrade off 
the battle-field — but it was not well told. Five years 
passed before it took the true humorous-story form and 
became "about the funniest thing" that Mark Twain 
"ever listened to." 

About 1884 the lecture title was changed to "Eccen- 
tricities of Western Humor." Later it was "Charac- 
teristics of the Hoosier Dialect," and still later, "A 
Little Attenuated Capability," which might as well 
have been any other title so far as it related to the 
text. New poems, "Knee-deep in June" and "Kingry's 
Mill," were included in his list of recitations, and a 



188 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

prose sketch, ''The Dicktown Wonder," a speech in 
dialect of an old-time legislator at a natural gas meet- 
ing in his village, which happened to be in the heart 
of the ''Great Indiana Gas Belt." As "cheerman" of 
the meeting he apprised his neighbors of the vast 
resources under them, and admonished his community 
"to keep clear heads" and "stretch every nerve" to the 
great possibilities ahead of it. 

Changes in the poet's entertainment continued to the 
year 1887, when the lecture feature was wholly dis- 
continued. Henceforth "an evening with Riley" meant 
the recital of his poems, accompanied by "those de- 
licious interludes" which made his readings famous. 

In the half-dozen years with the Redpath Bureau, 
return engagements had been the rule. He had lec- 
tured in most of the cities and in scores of small towns 
from Manhattan, Kansas, to Maine. The rewards had 
been sufficient for a livelihood ; on the whole, more to 
be desired than the evils to be dreaded. Woes had been 
cumulative. He "was crowded along in a sort of lock- 
step through the year. Distraction," he wrote a friend, 
"follows in the wake of this relentless business. Night- 
time I always like, for then I talk to crowds, but 
through the day — ^hurry, worry, bother, bluster, 
anxiety, and hunger for companionship. Strangers to 
the right of me, strangers to the left of me, and always 
the spiteful and convulsive jerking of the car, and the 
din and clangor of the wheels, and the yelp of the bells 
of the passing trains, and so on, ad hysterium!" 

Sunday was his lonely day. His experience one 
winter in Pennsylvania is a sample of what happened 
at other frozen points. He wrote George Hitt about 
it from the 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE ^EIGHTIES 189 

Tifft House, Buffalo, N. Y., February 2, 1883. 
Dear George: 

The papers sent to Lock Haven were glorious. I 
have read them into shreds. Stayed there over Sun- 
day — had a big house there Saturday night, though I 
did not get in till half past eight. Everj^body de- 
lighted, as it seems everybody has been every place I 
have appeared. Guess I am really doing better than 
ever before. No single point visited yet that I have 
not been assured of a recall. But it is still cold. Cer- 
tainly, as congestive as the western thermometer has 
been, it has not reached the level of the East. Coming 
here from Portville yesterday, the frost on the car 
windows reached the depth of a quarter of an inch at 
least, and the wind was something awful. It seemed 
we would be blown from the track, and that half the 
time the cars were running on one rail, with trucks 
cocked in the air and freezing like a rooster on one leg. 

But I must close. Have met all the newspaper men, 
and been treated royally by them. They are fine fel- 
lows and all seem to know the Journal well. 

Hastily, Jamesy. 

While "locked up" in Lock Haven, he wrote to an- 
other associate on the Journal (Lewis D. Hayes) in 
rhyme, entitling the same 

MY HOT DISPLEASURE. 

[And then I'll curl up like a dog in a basket. 
And drop sound asleep as a corpse in a casket.] 

—Old Couplet. 
Dear Hayes: 

I'm shut up in a primitive town 

Where all hope has gone up, and all enterprise down ; 
Where the meetin'-house bells ever wrangle and moan 
From morning to night in a heart-breaking tone, 
And the few mournful people one sees on the street 
Are all wending their way to some holy retreat 



190 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Where God is supposed to impatiently wait 

For their coming, and greet them, enrapt and elate 

With the '"honor" they do Him, while bending the knee 

And begging Him tearfully not to damn me, — 

And here I stare out through an eight-by-ten pane 

With my thoughts in the past and my eyes in the rain ! 

But — well — IVe a fire that's doing its best, 

And a split-bottom rocker offers me rest, 

And a new magazine, and tobacco in stock 

Sufficient to last till the peal of the clock 

Of the dawn of the morrow shall chuckle me free 

Of the horrors of Sunday — God pitying me! 

I'm not in a mood, you'll observe, that is quite 

At peace with the world, or at war with delight, 

Yet honestly striving to gallantly bear 

With the trials, disaster, and trouble and care 

That is mine to endure. I will murmur no more, 

But lie to myself and be glad as of yore. 

The week that is past was a good one to me. 
And my show well received as a circus could be, — 
The people all tickled — Committees the same. 
And my praise — like a sky-rocket fired at Fame; 
And, a moment ago, counting over the great 
Fat roll in my pocket, I'm happy to state 
I found that I had, with but little lack yet. 
An opulence vast as the depths of my debt. 
And that, as I've promised, when settled entire, 
Will give the right to the rest I desire, — 
When I may curl up like a dog in a basket 
And drop sound asleep as a corpse in a casket. 

J. W. R. 

There was frost outside the car windows and some- 
times inside, and yet the road had its compensations, 
acquaintance with and sometimes the golden compan- 
ionship of distinguished men, whom, without the vexa- 
tions of traveling, the poet had not known. One day 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 191 

in the Empire State he met Matthew Arnold. At first 
thought, an unhappy situation might be inferred in 
the meeting of two men who seemed to be at the 
antipodes of social intercourse. Just what was Ar- 
nold's opinion of the Hoosier Poet is unknown. Riley's 
letters and conversation about the foreigner gave at 
times a cartoon effect. "A gaunt, raw-boned Brit- 
isher," he once remarked to a reporter, "with Scotch 
hair, Scotch eyes, Scotch complexion, mutton-chop 
whiskers and a cowcatcher nose" : a contrast indeed to 
a portrait of the Hoosier at the time — "a short, robust 
young man, with a florid complexion, large nose, 
smooth-shaven face, blond hair, and very practical- 
looking, near-sighted blue eyes behind a pair of 
glasses." And yet, notwithstanding the Englishman's 
harsh features, supercilious manners and the report 
that he parted his hair in the middle, Riley had an 
affection for him. "How the big, well-fed man with 
his single eye-glass and pronounced British speech," 
said he, "could have written anything so tender and 
sympathetic as *The Forsaken Merman/ it is impos- 
sible for me to realize. Never again will I trust to 
appearances." All the same, Arnold had written it, 
and it had become for Riley a favorite poem. "There 
was," Riley said, "a certain cadence in the lines which 
softened the woes of the road," and many times he 
repeated them — 

"Now the great winds shoreward blow; 
Now the salt tides seaward flow; 
Now the wild white horses play. 
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 

Children dear, let us away. 

This way, this way." 



192 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The travelers had a half -day's journey together — 
two hundred miles in a railway car. Arnold told of 
his experience in New York, how he had been to hear 
Henry Ward Beecher, and how he had been so luxu- 
riously entertained by the Union League, the Century, 
St. Nicholas and Knickerbocker Clubs. But it was 
impossible to work there. In vain he had tried to 
write his lecture on Emerson. The blaring publicity 
of the city had no parallel. Interruptions were inces- 
sant. "Americans," he said, "have no love of quiet. 
They have an abnormal desire for publicity, must be 
on the go all day long." This led him, to observe that 
there were no cabs, and no privacy in America for a 
gentleman. "I go out here to lecture in a city at the 
other end of the state," he said, "and I have to travel 
by tram and before reaching my destination make 
changes and take the chance of a walk in bad weather." 
All of which Riley knew was true, and yet he could 
not help having an inward sense of satisfaction that 
this king of letters from the British Empire was be- 
coming acquainted with the ways of democracy. 

Riley remembered that about noon the talk turned 
to American literature. Arnold praised Poe warmly. 
"I do not recall," returned Riley, "a single cheerful 
thing Poe ever wrote. Has a man any right to blot 
hope out of this world? That is all we have. Prob- 
ably Longfellow had as many doubts and fears as Poe, 
but he did not voice them in his verse. Poetry should 
deal with bright and beautiful things." 

Riley fancied that he had in this made a center shot, 
but the face of his British acquaintance, he said, was 
"as cold and inexpressive as an iceberg at anchor in 
the Strait of Belle Isle." (He had not the slightest 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 193 

notion of the location of Belle Isle, but it was a high- 
sounding simile and that was sufficient.) 

Riley's experience with Arnold was unique. He 
promptly wrote Myron Reed about it from the 

Tremont House, Boston. (January, 1884.) 
My dear Reed : 

I don't know whether you will like Matthew Arnold 
or not — I know you like some things he has written. 
Two or three days ago I met him, coming out of New 
York into Binghampton, and had some opportunity to 
inspect him — my way. 

He is English thoroughly, though quite Scotch in 
appearance. Until you hear him speak you would say 
Scotch. A tall, strong face, with a basement-story 
chin, and an eye eager, unconscious, restless ; gray and 
not large. A heavy man physically, though not of 
extra flesh — simply, a fine manly skeleton properly 
draped. He is self-sufficient, and yet trying to do bet- 
ter, on his own advice, not at all snobbish, and yet 
with hardly enough vanity to stand the criticism. He 
is a marked combination of learning, fancy and mat- 
ter-of-fact. An hour before we became acquainted 
I inspected him and saw his colossal mind lost in the 
lore of the railroad guide the same as if it were Homer 
in the original text. I noticed, too, that when he 
bought a three-cent paper, he took back his two-cent 
change and put it away as carefully as he would a five- 
pound note. He is poor, however, and I mention this 
only as an instance of a national characteristic which 
may perhaps have been inherited — only in these "God- 
bless-us-every-one" times I could but remark in mental 
aside, '' 'Tis very good to be American !" 

He seemed greatly pleased with all he saw and spoke 
honestly of his surprise at the country he found here. 
Was utterly stolid, however, and enjoyed it all like 
working a sum. Didn't parade himself — and wore 
arctics and never forgot his umbrella. Much of the 



194 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

time, too, he was studying his lecture — in printed 
form — and ignoring the dailies that were having so 
much to say about him. I think he has no sense of 
humor whatever. A joke that tackled him, would 
hide its head in shame, and skulk away and weep. 

Riley's admiration for Arnold was hardly to be 
expected, and yet as weeks passed it was deepened. 
"I like him,'' he said for publication in Kansas City 
a month after meeting him ; *1 like him for his sturdy 
grandeur." He admired his courageous adherence to 
the old law that moral causes govern the standing and 
falling of men and nations. On reaching America, 
Arnold had given his lecture on "Numbers" in Chick- 
ering Hall, New York. He had talked plainly about 
society in England and the United States. He deplored 
the madness of the multitude. The multitude was 
affording the means for their own destruction. It 
was clear to him that the majority were unsound. The 
unsound majority had been the ruin of Greece and 
Rome and would be the ruin of England and America. 
Riley in his lecture was talking to his audience about 
the educational advance of "the swarming millions," 
and how they were being "led along to the highest 
altitudes of light" by our educational institutions. To 
Arnold the question was a deeper one. The education 
of the masses was essential, but unless they were 
transformed they could not finally stand. Myron Reed 
was in the habit of quoting Lincoln to Riley that "the 
people wabble right." It was clear to Arnold that they 
often wabbled wrong. Wabbling wrong meant their 
doom. Educational institutions alone could not trans- 
form them. Why flatter the college and the university, 
since but a minute fragment of the population is 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE ^EIGHTIES 195 

reached by them? Neglect and evasion were wicked. 
There was no dodging the issue. The majority was 
unsound. 

As Riley went from town to town he did not join in 
the criticism of Arnold or the cries of the newspapers 
against him. It was good, he thought, for Americans 
to face the facts. 

As the lecture engagements increased, there was 
alarm in certain quarters over what was termed "the 
greed for pelf." Arnold was violently attacked for 
lecturing for "filthy lucre." Josh Billings escaped the 
fire by telling the newspapers that he "lectured for 
nothing with one hundred dollars thrown in." Mam- 
mon, it was said, was getting his clutches on the 
Hoosier Poet. "With all due respect to the recognized 
genius of J. W. Riley," Wrote a critic, "we are sorry 
to see him prostituting it upon the stage. He is not 
an actor, and but an ordinary mimic. He lacks both 
voice and physique, important factors when a man 
faces an audience. Then, he does not improve. His 
bear story and peanut lesson are growing just a little 
stale. They will hardly wear like Rip Van Winkle. He 
reads well, yet the late Artemus Ward was greatly his 
superior. Riley is a genuine poet and a writer of 
strong and original prose. His place is among the 
magazines of the country, and there he can make his 
mark, and stand with Holland, Howells and other 
novelists, and with Swinburne, Stedman, Taylor and 
other poets of wide reputation, and in years may ap- 
proach Whittier and Longfellow. But his desire to 
make money has overbalanced his better judgment. 
We are proud of Riley, and hope the day is not far 
distant when he will see the error of his way." 



196 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The ovations he received on his last reading tour, 
twenty years later, refute the charge that he was not 
a success on the stage. His "Object Lesson" did wear 
like Rip Van Winkle. Had the writer accused him of 
bowing to Mammon at a later period, he might have 
had grounds for his conclusion, but to say it back there 
in the 'eighties was to interpret falsely. Then, for 
Riley, the daily question was, how to make a living 
while writing poetry. He was weary of dependence, 
and the "perpetuity of old accounts, — grisly old ones," 
he said, "that had been handed down through the ages 
from the panic of 1873." He wanted to be known as 
solvent — "put off all foreign support and stand alone." 
Returns from his readings varied from thirty to sixty 
dollars a night. Little was left after deducting the 
Bureau's commission and expenses. Often there "was 
a long distance between engagements. His profits 
vanished in railroad fares. "My next lecture is at 
Weeping Water, Nebraska," he once moaned, two hun- 
dred miles from his destination. "I have every assur- 
ance that my appearance there will make it all its name 
implies." 

There were the losses from stormy nights and "bad 
business," and requests for lower terms for a second 
reading to make up for the deficit on the first. One 
committee, however, which had lost fifteen dollars, 
was content with an autograph. 

"Jes' my ortograph, you say. 
Will pay all I owe you — eh? 
Only wish 'at I could pay 
All my old debts that-away! 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 197 

"Cross my heart ! and 'onner bright ! 
I'd stay 'way from Church to-night, 
And set down and write and write 
Clean from now till plum daylight!" 

The profit from his Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven 
More Poems was also light. No royalty check of 
four thousand dollars came to him at the age of thirty- 
four as it did to his "dear old Mark Twain." 

The charge that Riley was prostituting his genius 
on the stage was a more serious one. No one knew 
better than he the damaging effect of travel and its 
attendant evils on the poetic impulse. He was em- 
phatically of the opinion that "mentality is at its low- 
est ebb in a railway station." How could a man write 
poetry when "darting up and down and round the 
country like a water bug!" Traveling had also, in his 
opinion, a painful effect on conduct. "You see, aside 
from new complexities of work," he wrote a friend, 
asking her to forgive his untidy scrawling, "I am 
corresponding with a Bureau; and through elevations 
of hope and depressions of doubt and suspense, am 
kept dancing up and down like the vacillating bal- 
ance of an apothecary's scales. I can think of noth- 
ing but myself in reality, though I have to affect such 
poems as this, ["The Dead Wife"], just handed to the 
printer half an hour ago. But do not judge from it 
that I was ever married, since, fortunately for my 
wife that might have been, I never was; for, at times 
and oftentimes, I am a very disagreeable young man. 
Nothing in earth or heaven, I almost think, would sat- 
isfy me then." 



198 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Two years later he wrote the friend again: "My 
holidays have not been opulent with gifts, for I have 
been thrown and tossed about most carelessly by cir- 
cumstance, having to fill these wretched, but most 
blessed lecture engagements, in which I am forced to 
forego all personal desires and hopes and simply be an 
automaton till the curtain falls on the last poor act, 
my friend, and the season's quit — ^quiet — dead and 
buried/' 

And by a season usually was meant a division of 
time less than a spring or a summer. After a few 
weeks of fatigue and exasperation, his conscience the 
while "tearing away at his heart like a leopard" — ^he 
would begin to curse the interruptions. "God Al- 
mighty knows,'' he would moan, "I do not deserve 
them. The switching and hooting of freight trains, 
and the rumbling of Pittsburgh Specials and Man- 
hattan Limiteds can provide more disaster for a poet 
in one hour than solitude yields in a year. He does 
not have to court calamities. Street crossings and 
railroads breed them faster than carrion hatches flies." 
The result of such wailings was of course a curtailing 
of Bureau engagements, and a return to Indianapolis 
and the quiet of the "Dead Rose" or the "Crow's 
Nest." 

It would be incorrect to conclude that the road did 
not yield poems. It did. The poet wrote them in spite 
of the interruptions. "Take your time," wrote a maga- 
zine editor. "Well, now, my dear man," answered 
Riley, "I can not take time to do anything. I am 
running round Indiana like a case of ringworm. Be- 
sides, I know not how many Decoration poems and a 
college oration, I have all my regular work to do, 



ON THE PLATFORM IN THE 'EIGHTIES 199 

which just has to be done. When your letter came I 
could not sleep. So I wrote this conceit [a poem] 
which I have hunched and stabbed and punched and 
jabbed into present shape on the train since five 
o'clock this morning." 

Several of the "Boone County poems'' were begun 
"away from home." Many ideas for them came 
through car windows from barnyards and cornfields. 
They were not written to order, nor were they pro- 
duced immediately preceding their appearance in the 
Journal. It was pure fiction that the poet, under pres- 
sure of the managing editor, went to the desk one even- 
ing and "dashed off a poem in time to keep a theater 
engagement." Part of "My Philosofy," (the first of 
the series in order of production) was written at night 
in a country tavern after a public reading. The poet 
had seen a bully in the lobby, whose swaggering and 
faultfinding had been an offense to a mild old shop- 
keeper. The latter's comments were too worthy to be 
lost. Going to his room, Eiley reduced them to rhyme : 

"The signs is bad when folks commence 
A-findin' fault with Providence, 
And balkin' 'cause the earth don't shake 
At ev'ry prancin' step they take. 
No man is grate tel he can see 
How less than little he would be 
Ef stripped to self, and stark and bare 
He hung his sign out anywhare. 

"My doctern is to lay aside 
Contensions, and be satisfied: 
Jest do your best, and praise er blame 
That follers that, counts jest the same. 



200 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

IVe alius noticed grate success 
Is mixed with troubles, more er less, 
And it's the man who does his best 
That gits more kicks than all the rest." 

All in all, the experience on the road had been of 
surpassing value. By voice and pen he had been "res- 
cuing from oblivion,'' the disappearing vernacular of 
the frontier, and the thought of an age in Indiana that 
was fast passing away. By degrees he had so per- 
fected his recitations that there was little left for any- 
thing but applause. On every hand was flattering evi- 
dence of his growing popularity. "He interprets with 
sympathy and insight,*' said an intellectual observer, 
"those little things to which the rest of us are blind. 
Always hereafter we shall like his readings for what 
he has written, and his writings for what he has read." 



CHAPTER XI 

ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 

ONE evening in August, 1883, a score of happy 
Hoosiers drove from Delphi, along the road up 
Deer Creek, to Camden, where their favorite 
poet gave his lecture on "Characteristics of Western 
Humor/' After the lecture his friends bought copies 
of The Old Swimmin'-'Hole, on sale at the door, and 
returned with the poet to Delphi, where a week later 
he repeated the lecture to a charming audience of 
Delphians. Never before had the people of that region 
found a man who could so happily interpret so many 
different phases of humanity in a manner so master- 
ful. It was the beginning of Riley's frequent visits to 
Carroll County. In the immediate years to come, the 
region had a decided influence on his production of 
verse. It also influenced his reputation on the plat- 
form. 

For the fourth time in four years he had the honor 
of filling the Baptist Church in Franklin, Massachu- 
setts. After his last reading his audience left the 
church with some very catchy lines on their lips: 

'*Well! I never seen the ocean ner I never seen the 

sea. 
On the banks o' Deer Crick's grand enough fer me!" 

At lectures afterward, in towns between New England 
and Nebraska, he was sometimes introduced as the 

201 



202 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"Bard of Deer Creek." He rather enjoyed it. In no 
sense was he a bard of the city. As has been seen he 
loved to make some odd character the mouthpiece for 
his verse. Near Delphi he found a farmer, whose 
Eden was on Deer Creek, and from whom he caught 
the refrain: "On the banks of Deer Creek is good 
enough for me." 

Scarcely had he reached his destination when he 
told George Hitt and the Journal of his good for- 
tune: 

Delphi, Indiana, August 27, 1883. 
Dear George: 

Had a big house and big time at Camden, and a 
first-class success seems assured here. Shut up at 
work as you are, I feel altogether unworthy of the rest 
and peace that has fallen on me. Every day a long 
invigorating breath, the graciousness of which I am 
sure no seacoast could rival; and every day a drive 
with my friend to his farm seven or eight miles in the 
country. And every day I wish I had come here 
months ago, and yearn to stay months longer. 
As ever Faithfully and always Yours, 

Jamesy. 

It was said that Riley fished along Deer Creek from 
the Wabash to Bachelor's Run. "I never held a pole 
an hour the whole time I spent there," he declared. 
The facts were he was fishing for poems and he found 
them, such as "The Boys," "A Poor Man's Wealth," 
"The Beautiful City," "The Blossoms in the Trees," 
"Wet-Weather Talk," "Knee-Deep in June," and a 
score more. True he found them in his imagination 
and memory, and sometimes he finished them in In- 
dianapolis or Greenfield, but they originated on Deer 



ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 203 

Creek. The stream and its vicinity awakened the 
''songs of long ago." There were winding miles of 
country roads, bordered by little orchards, clover fields, 
and the dark retreats of forest trees — majestic elms, 
beech, walnut, hickory, ash and sycamore still stand- 
ing. Red apples "burned in the tangled grass'* as the 
poet had seen them in childhood. The cider press 
blended its chuckle with the lowing of cows and the 
droning of the bees. 

"If there was no opportunity to go to Delphi," said 
Riley, "I made one. It was a refuge from' the swelter- 
ing heat of the city. My friend. Doctor Wyckliffe 
Smith, gave me a warm, full-chested welcome. He 
belonged to the Old Settlers* Association, and knew 
the history of families in that region from the time 
their neighbors were reptiles, vv^olves and Indians. He 
was a jovial, whole-souled man. He lived solely for 
the benefit of others. His largeness of heart was not 
bounded by Carroll County. In our Spanish War it 
reached to the hospitals and battle-fields of Cuba." 

Riley chants the praise of his "Delphian Oracle" in 
his poem, "From Delphi to Camden" — a ride with his 
friend on a rainy night: 

"While the master and commander — ^the brave knight 

he galloped with 
On his reckless ride to ruin or to fame was — Dr. 

Smith." 

The reckless ride suggested or rather awakened out 
of memory another poem, "Billy Could Ride." Substi- 
tute Riley for Billy and the reader has a picture of a 
Greenfield incident in the Grant and Colfax campaign, 
when Riley and other young men rode behind a slow 



204 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

three-mile "delegation" on the old National Road, — 
when he, in a fit of impatience on a prancing chestnut 
mare, whipped suddenly forward into town: 

"And to see him dashing out of the line 
At the edge of the road and down the side 
Of the long procession, all laws defied, 
And the fife and drums, was a sight divine 
To the girls, in their white-and-spangled pride, 
Wearily waving their scarfs about 
In the great 'Big Wagon,' all gilt without 
And jolt within, as they lumbered on 
Into the town where Billy had gone 
An hour ahead, like a knightly guide — 
but the way that Billy could ride!" 

While riding with the Doctor at another time, Riley 
called one evening at the quaint home of a German 
farmer, whose garden and orchard, late that night, 
blossomed in "Herr Weiser," the initial poem in After^ 
whiles. He had discovered another dear old man — 
the picture of unassuming honesty, a hale countryman 
"reflecting the sunshine." 

Political excitement in the summer and fall of 1884 
was intense. "The people down here," wrote a lecture 
committee of Cambridge City, Indiana, "are going to 
elect Blaine." Postponement of Riley's lecture there 
and elsewhere until after the campaign, gave him an- 
other interval of peace and quiet on Deer Creek. Early 
in the summer he had gone there for another reason — 
the absence of The Thousandth Man from Indian- 
apolis, "which," he said, "made the whole heart faint 
and lonesome." "Myron W. Reed," he wrote a friend, 
"is about leaving his church here for other fields, and 
the city generally is in mourning. What a good man 



ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 205 

he is — and how Burns would have loved him ! I have 
tried to write him a poem, *Our Kind of a Man/ " At 
once the poem began its cruise in the newspapers, com- 
ing to anchor afterward in Afterwhiles, Near friends 
described the life-history of the preacher in the first 
six lines: 

"The kind of a man for you and me I 
He faces the world unflinchingly, 
And smites, as long as the wrong resists. 
With a knuckled faith and force like fists : 
He lives the life he is preaching of. 
And loves where most is the need of love." 

The next summer (1885) the wires brought from 
Mt. McGregor the news of the death of General Grant. 
For two weeks the republic wore the emblems of 
mourning, and Delphi, with the other communities, 
bowed its head in grief. Memorial services were held 
in the Skating Rink, a gathering of three thousand 
people *'with four times as many outside," who could 
not gain entrance. On the afternoon of August eighth, 
while the burial service was being read over the dead 
warrior, the Delphi audience listened to an address by 
Judge J. H. Gould and a poem by Whitcomb Riley, 
entitled "At Rest," prepared for the occasion and read 
with impressive effect. (In Afterwhiles it received 
the simple title, "Grant.") 

Riley was chosen spontaneously to voice the feeling 
of the people. "Imbued with patriotic spirit," it was 
said, "J. W. Riley is the Indianian above all others to 
put in verse the tribute of our state to the memory of 
the great soldier." He was the people's choice — but 
thereby came vexation to the poet. "The very 



206 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

seconds of the clock/' he said, "piled in heaps of misery 
around me." 

It was one of the rare instances when Riley suc- 
ceeded in writing a poem to order. But writing it 
was like reaching a result at the point of the bayonet. 
On the afternoon of the day before its delivery, Judge 
Gould found Riley in his room with papers, books, and 
pencil-notes scattered right and left on the floor. "For 
days," said the judge, "Riley had been in agony. His 
eyes were abnormally large; he trembled at the 
thought of failure." It had been the literal truth that 
he could not see daylight. He had not dared to go out 
on the street for fresh air and sunlight. "It was the 
rule of General Grant," said Riley to the program 
committee in the evening, "to be ready, and here I am 
with to-morrow calling for 'copy' — not ready. When 
the General had done his best he could leave a thing, 
commit all to Providence. I can not leave a thing, 
most certainly not when that thing is a poem. I am 
driven — ^harnessed to my charge. I can not rest. I 
think now the poem is finished, but midnight will call 
me from bed to make a change." 

For inspiration, while writing the poem, Riley read 
Tennyson's ode to the great Lord Wellington. Par- 
ticularly he repeated: 

"Our greatest, yet with least pretense, 
Great in council and great in war, 
Foremost Captain of his time 
Rich in saving common sense, 
And, as the greatest only are. 
In his simplicity sublime." 

He had also a sentiment about Sir Launcelot from 
The Age of Chivalry, which afterward became the 




On the Banks of Deer Ckeek, Beloved Sceneky which Inspired 
"Knee-deep in June," and Other Poems 




Old Settlers' jNIeeting at Oaklandon, Marion County, 
Indiana — 1878 



ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 207 

introductory note to the poem, how the knight re- 
turned from the wide wild forest, unlaced his helmet, 
and ungirdled his sword, and laid him down to sleep 
upon his shield. But most of all, Riley cherished his 
own lines, his vision of the boyhood of the Silent Man, 
a youth with the courage of his emotions: 

"A brave lad, wearing a manly brow. 

Knit as with problems of grave dispute. 
And a face, like the bloom of the orchard bough, 

Pink and pallid, but resolute; 
And flushed it grows as the clover-bloom, 

And fresh it gleams as the morning dew. 
As he reins his steed where the quick quails boom 

Up from the grasses he races through. 

"And does he dream of the Warrior's fame — 

This Western boy in his rustic dress ? 
For, in miniature, this is the man that came 

Riding out of the Wilderness! 
The selfsame figure — the knitted brow — 

The eyes full steady — ^the lips full mute — 
And the face, like the bloom of the orchard bough, 

Pink and pallid, but resolute." 

Ignorance of Riley's method of composition pre- 
vailed in Delphi as in Greenfield and Indianapolis. 
He '^opened his dark sayings on the harp," but his 
friends failed to comprehend him. In August "On 
the Banks o' Deer Crick" was printed in the Delphi 
Times. "When did he write it?" they asked, know- 
ing how he had been absorbed in the Grant poem. He 
was contributing regularly to the Jourfval — such 
poems as "Griggsby's Station," "Ike Walton's Prayer," 
"Curly Locks," "Billy Could Ride" and "Dave Field." 
When did he write them? The truth was he did not 



208 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

originate them then. He answered the call for "copy" 
from his budget of poems, some of them new, others 
weeks or a year old. "The Banks o' Deer Crick" was 
written two months before it was printed. He wanted 
"to caress it" a while — "love it all alone." At the 
Pioneer Picnic, a week after the Memorial service, he 
read a long poem to a crowd as large as that which 
gathered in memory of Grant. Again the question. 
When did he write it ? He wrote it seven years before 
and read it at the Reunion of Old Settlers, at Oakland, 
Indiana. Pioneer Day two months later (October, 
1878), appearing on the program with Mrs. Sarah T. 
Bolton, he read it again at the old Indiana State Fair 
Grounds. Twelve years later part of the poem was 
detached and entitled "A Child's Home — Long Ago" 
for Rhymes of Childhood. 

In appreciation of what the poet had done for Car- 
roll County — in reality what he had done for the good 
name of Indiana — ^the citizens of Delphi, "desiring to 
do the square thing," tendered him a public benefit, 
a reception at the Opera House. It was a memorable 
evening, the poet was at his best in his recitations and 
everybody satisfied — with one exceptioTL The night 
of the benefit Riley slept, as he sometimes did, in Doc- 
tor Smith's office, in a little room separated by a thin 
partition, half-way to the ceiling, from the main office. 
The next morning a woman called at the office while 
Riley was still sleeping. She had a biting tongue and 
a prejudice against all forms of entertainment, and 
the Doctor knew it. Here was his chance to get even 
with the poet for some practical joke Riley had played 
on him. After prescribing for his patient, he said as 
she rose to go: 



ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 209 

"By the way, did you hear Riley last night?" 

*'Yes/' she answered. 

"Did you ever waste money so recklessly before?" 
asked the Doctor, contributing to the severity of the 
criticism he was certain would follow. 

"I never did," said she. "The Hoosier Poet comes 
up here to our town sponsored by Billings, Mark 
Twain and Longfellow. Burdette says he is pure 
gold; I say he is pure gabble. If I had my money 
back—" 

Scarcely had she uttered the words when flip over 
the partition came a silver half-dollar, which landed 
on the floor at her feet. In their joint astonishment 
the Doctor picked it up, very suavely handed it to her, 
and she left the oflSce wondering where it had come 
from. 

In a few moments Riley came through the parti- 
tion. 

"Well— well," smiled the Doctor, "I did not know 
you were awake." 

"I was not awake," drawled Riley wearily, "but 
there are times — there are times — when suffering 
from nightmare — that I — ^that I reach my trousers — 
and my pocketbook — in my sleep." 

At Delphi the poet planned his second book, The 
Boss Girl, a title he was afterward as much ashamed 
of as at first he was proud. The second edition of 
The Old Swimmin'-Hole had been going well and he 
had been mailing copies to authors "in domestic and 
foreign lands." One copy at least reached Great 
Britain as is seen from his letter to the English 
poet : 



210 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Indianapolis, Indiana, U. S. A., March 17, 1885. 
Mr. Robert Browning. 
Dear Sir: 

'Trom his poems, as I take it, Robert Browning is 
a brave intrepid man. No fear but he can face your 
book and never flinch!'* 

So a sound, but oftentimes facetious friend said to 
me yesterday, and so I send you the book. It is a 
small collection of American dialectic poems, or 
rhymes rather, in the *'Hoosier" idiom — the same as 
faithfully reproduced as a lifetime's acquaintance with 
a simple, wholesome people and their quaint vernacu- 
lar enables me to portray it. For years I have be- 
lieved that unused poetical material in fairly rich 
veins lies in this country region, and a music too, how- 
ever rude, in the quaint speech of the people. In the 
specimen I beg you to accept, should you find even 
trivial evidence of the truth of the theory I shall be 
glad. 

God bless you, sir, and believe me, from years prior 
to this, and now, and on and on. 

Your friend, 

James W. Riley. 

He had found abundant poetical material on Deer 
Creek, and had been making use of it, but it was 
fresh from the mint — not, in his judgment, the kind 
of material for a new book. "A new book must con- 
tain old productions,'' by which he meant poems or 
sketches that had been written months or years be- 
fore. After the lapse of time and the "final revision" 
they were more likely to ring true. Then too that 
was by nature Riley's way of doing things — keeping 
up the wires between him and his heaven of existence, 
the Long Ago. Not only his first and second book but 
all his books, with rare exception, were made in that 



ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 211 

way. It was not his fashion to sit down and say, I 
will write me a book. He compiled it from what he 
had already written and revised it most rigorously 
unless prevented by the demands of the platform. 
''Going over the trunks and boxes and old nail kegs 
and beehives/* he wrote George Hitt, "I have dug out 
enough stuff for three or four books. Am in splendid 
kelter and inclination for work, and believe I am 
sound now for years — nerves shattered — ^but heart 
and soul shipshape and eye serene and steadfast fac- 
ing the guns.'* 

In The Boss Girl, consisting of ten poems and ten 
prose sketches, Riley went back for copy as far as 
'Tame" and "The Remarkable Man,*' back nine years, 
to February, 1877. The sketch which gave the book 
its title had been so popular in the Indianapolis Jour- 
nal, that the issue had been exhausted. Readers could 
not forget the "boss girl's" dismal room with its 
smoky lamp and broken doors — her wasted hands, her 
haggard face, and the dark star-purity of her lumin- 
ous eyes. There also in cherished memory was the 
elf child, the little pixy-form of Mary Alice Smith on 
the stairway. 

The poet had determined on the character of the 
book at Delphi. Returning to Indianapolis he experi- 
mented several days on an illustration, a design for 
the paper-back cover. In this he was assisted by 
Booth Tarkington, then a youth to Princeton and 
Monsieur Beaucaire unknown. 

Once a week in those days, the poet strolled "up- 
town" to bask in the sunshine of the Tarkington house- 
hold, where, by telling stories of books he had read, 
and acting scenes from them, he kept his little audi- 



212 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ence chuckling and laughing by the hour. "One 
night," writes Tarkington (the boy in the genial pic- 
ture), "the poet came to the boy's house in a state of 
unusual gaiety over a book he was going to have pub- 
lished — ^his first book to be printed over his own name. 
That night the poet drew a design for the cover, an ink 
bottle mounted like a cannon and firing a charge of 
ink which formed, in explosion, the letters in the list 
of titles for the sketches. The poet seemed anxious 
to know how the boy liked the design; and the boy, 
encouraged to add something, drew an imp leaning 
down out of the cloud with a quill pen in his hand, the 
pen firing the touchhole of the ink-bottle cannon; and 
thus the cover was printed and that boy insufferably 
puffed up." 

This book marks the beginning of the poet's good 
fortune with his publishers (now The Bobbs-Merrill 
Company). A little circular issued by them at the 
time suggests the cordial relation between them and 
the poet, which was never broken. 

THE BOSS GIRL 
A Christmas Story 

AND OTHER SKETCHES 

By 

James Whitcomb Riley, 
Author of "The Old Swimmin'-Hole." 

It gives us much pleasure to announce that on De- 
cember 1st we will publish a new book, under the 
above title, by Indiana's favorite Poet, Author and 
Lecturer. Those who have read Mr. Riley's "Old 



ON THE BANKS OF DEER CREEK 213 

Swimmin'-Hole," or revelled in the humor of his lec- 
tures, will be delighted with 

THE BOSS GIRL. 

This little book reveals the twofold ability of the 
gifted author. Mr. Riley's insight into life is marvel- 
ous, and powerfully appeals to the heart. We con- 
gratulate both ourselves and the people at large on 
the publication, which, we feel, is assured of a hearty 
welcome and widely extended sale. 

Price, Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50c. 
Respectfully, 

THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO., 
Publishers, Booksellers and Importers, 
16 and 18 West Washington Street, 
Indianapolis, Indiana. 
November 23, 1885. 

The first edition was quickly sold, while the poet 
was on the wing. He wrote Doctor Newton Matthews : 

January 1, 1886. 
Dear Matthews — and an uncommon happy New Year ! 

Awful glad you like the book. It is better than I 
dared to hope, however hard I set my teeth and 
wished and wished and wished. The last sketch is my 
pet — "The Spider," and I was fearful you were not 
going to say a word in praise of that. Now it is all 
right and I am perfectly relieved. 

The book is clean out of print — a week ago. Next 
edition delayed by paper — 'ad-dam it ! and had it been 
ready would have been exhausted too. Too bad! 
Last night at Champaign (Illinois). Nearly a thou- 
sand people; and your friends — every one of them — 
and mine, too, now, I hope, 

As I am Yours, J. W. Riley. 



214 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

A year or two and the poet was less enthusiastic 
about the book. There were many errors in it, many 
lines and occasionally a paragraph that would have 
been stricken out had he had the opportunity to work 
on the proofs. 'The ghost of Dickens," wrote a 
prominent friend and critic, "has laid his hand on 
some of the stories. On the whole they are disappoint- 
ing. The poet has been switched off on the wrong 
track. He should stick to poetry." 

A while longer and his sighs grew to downright 
dissatisfaction over the defects. "If you have visited 
Mount Vesuvius during business hours," he wrote a 
a friend, "come now and see me in a state of eruption 
over this book." Answering an English publisher 
(1888) who had made inquiries about the stories he 
said: "As to v'l^ose work for your magazine, I could 
engage to furnish nothing for some months at least. 
Here — much as I deplore the fact — few but the writer 
seem at all taken with that work; and in consequence 
all orders lean decidedly to verse — and that too in 
dialect. Of prose therefore I have printed but one 
book, and that almost wholly unknown except to the 
very prescribed market of my native state. It was, 
to begin with, unhappily named — then, unfortunately, 
edited in my absence. All its manifold defects I much 
want to exterminate and set it forth again, for I be- 
lieve in it, and nothing would better please me than 
for an English house like yours to manifest an interest 
in it." 

Three years later the poems were omitted, and the 
title changed to Sketches in Prose, the second volume 
in the poet's complete edition. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SILVER LINING 

ii T ^^^'^^ ^^^ ^^^ Executive Committee of the 
I International Copyright League to invite you 

* to participate in the Authors' Readings, v^hich 
are to be given in Chickering Hall, New York, Novem- 
ber 28 and 29. Lowell will preside and Curtis, Clem- 
ens, Cable, Howells, Stockton, Warner, Eggleston, and 
Page will read from their own works. It will be a 
great occasion and worth your while to come." 

Such was the invitation extended to Riley by Robert 
Underwood Johnson then editor of the Century Maga- 
zine, It dropped from the clouds — a day in Novem- 
ber, 1887. Five years before the poet had come off 
with flying colors from Boston Town, and each year 
since, it had been his hope to win distinction in 
Gotham. He had talked about it to writers, ''from 
Matthew Arnold down to the Bard of McCordsville," 
he said. For a decade the League had been holding 
annual meetings in New York, at which authors had 
been reading from their books, but no invitation had 
been sent to the Hoosier Poet. In February he had 
won much praise with ''The Old Man and Jim." "You 
have hit the bulFs eye this time," wrote the editor of 
the Century, "The thing is a poem clean through. I 
would give a hundred dollars to have written it." 

But a magazine reputation is rather a transient 
thing. What Riley's friends and associates preferred 
just then was an opportunity for him to do something 

215 



216 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

in New York that would claim the attention of the 
newspapers. *'In the matter of my readings," he 
wrote Johnson, accepting the invitation, "I will try 
very hard not to disappoint you, for I feel as gravely 
conscientious as I am grateful for the opportunity so 
generously offered." 

The prospect was most alluring although the invita- 
tion came at a time when he was "crowded and hustled 
along pell-mell" in work on a new book. "Off at next 
gasp for New York and Bill Nye," he wrote Doctor 
Matthews, November twenty-third. "As yet I am not 
at liberty to state my mission, but in confidence you 
must know that I go there to read with American 
Authors. Is not that a great big and all-swelled-up 
honor for the little bench-leg poet out of this blessed 
Hoosier Nazareth? Only think of it! — introduced by 
James Russell Lowell to thousands of the crowned 
heads of the strictly elite literary eye-and-ear auditors 
of that Athens! Oh, heavens! — I feel indeed that I 
am a poor sewing girl. Will send you word of my 
success, big or little — or none." 

Next to the Authors' Readings, Riley's lodestar in 
the eastern visit was Bill Nye. They had exchanged 
affectionate letters for a year, and Nye when passing 
through Indianapolis, like Burdette, "remained over 
for a call on the Journal Works." Their letters were 
long and as Nye said, "often contained anecdotes not 
intended for the public's enjoyment." In the first 
letter quoted below he had intended to write one that 
Riley would put in his "autograph album" and point 
to with pride, but he soon discovered that it was not 
that kind of letter. "When I have been garnered in 
at last," he wrote, "and come before the Throne, 



THE SILVER LINING 217 

scared half to death for fear that the Almighty will 
introduce me to the audience and ask me to make a 
few remarks, I hope, Jamesie, that you will not pro- 
duce this letter and humiliate me." 

Nye had recently joined the staff of the New York 
World, Ee wrote Riley in September. This letter, 
in part, and Riley's answer, in part, and the Novem- 
ber letter arranging for their meeting, follow. Nye's 
residence was on Staten Island, a half-mile from St. 
George landing, and it was really a miracle that Riley 
reached it: 

My dear Jamesie: 

I wish you knew how many friends you have in this 
young and growing town. It would make you well. 
I went into a Broadway office the other day and heard 
a publisher recite "The Harelip.*' I had never heard 
it and I was pained to hear anybody recite one of your 
poems in the "0-Mother-may-I-go-to-school-with- 
Charles-to-day" style; but his admiration was mighty 
sincere and you could see that you had reached his 
large, dark red heart. 

My syndicate letter (the coming week) will be de- 
voted to you. It will do you no harm. I am very 
sorry you have not seen the Sunday World. I judged 
you would see it at the Journal Works. If you will 
notice my efforts you will see the footprints of your 
brain across my later geological strata like the eccen- 
tric trail of a drunk and disorderly Ichthyosauria 
going to his preadamite roost. This is not intended 
to cast any reflections on you in the matter of the 
Demon Rum, but more to show you how great has 
been your influence on the better class of literature. 

Good-bye, my dear Jamesie, with the best of wishes 
and the assurance that I will always use my influence 
for you at the Throne of Grace. 

Yours Ever, Bill. 



218 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The Journal, Indianapolis, November 11, 1887. 
(Confidential) 
Dear Nye: 

Just now there is an invitation to me to come and 
"say a piece" at the Authors' Readings. Consulting 
my own intentions about the matter, I find that I can 
go, and thus hasten to warn you of the fact, so's you 
can have your chores at home purty well off your 
hands and the house red up perparitory-like, as the 
feller says, to receive me with corroberatin' eclaw; 
and, last but not least, to ast you if I hadn't better 
fetch along a extry shirt, and buy my tobacker here, 
as I have heard my kind is not to be had there fer 
love er money. I wish, too, that you and Catalpa 
[Nye's wife] and the fambly would meet me at the 
depot — wherever I git off at, so's I won't git carried 
past and run on into some other town where I hain't 
got kith ner kin. I'm the blamedst fool travelin', I 
reckon, they is outside o' the durn lunatic asylum — 
'bout not gittin' trains, er gittin' the wrong one, and 
all sich aggervations that-away. 

Mr. Johnson mysteriously postscripts invitation to 
keep Reading in the dark for a few days — wonder 
why, and what 'ud become of a feller if he'd take it 
back, and I'd not get to go there after all. Reckon 
though, it's all right, as I bet on his friendship among 
the first. Write me soon and alius believe in me. 

As ever your 

Jamesie. 

New York, November 18, 1887. 
My dear Jamesie: 

Your note received just as I was embarking for a 
little lecture "spirt" and now that I am back again 
I will write to say that I will meet you at whatever 
train and time you say and welcome you with a big 
and pronounced welcome then and there. I went over 



THE SILVER LINING 219 

to Boston and jerked a few remarks for them the 
other evening. Kind friends came and laughed 
heartily. 

There was a brief announcement the other day in 
the papers of the Copyright Benefit but only a partial 
list of the attractions. It is a big thing, one of the 
best in a literary way in the Union and will be pre- 
sided over by our friend, James Russell Lowell who, 
as you know, is the author of *'The Old Swimmin-Hole 
and 'Leven More Poems.'* 

Write me at once and tell me accurately, giving me 
your Motif, and time table and how and when and 
where to meet you at Jersey City or the other depots 
of our young and thriving town, so that I will be there 
an hour or two beforehand walking up and down the 
platform with my team hitched outside ready to take 
you out to the farm where Catalpa and dear ones will 
be ready to greet you. Till then, "olive oil," as the 
sayin' is. Good-bye — and God's best and freshest new 
laid blessings on your soft and flaxen head. 

Yours with anticipations and things. 

Bill. 

"They were of humble origin with little of what the 
world calls education," Riley had read a score of years 
before in the British Painters, "They came from the 
great academy of nature and the influence of studios 
or galleries of art had no share in preparing them for 
the contest." Precisely so it was with the poet when 
he came to the "contest" in Chickering Hall. He was 
of humble origin and had little of what the world calls 
education, but he did have for daily encouragement 
the faith and good will of Indiana — a large, intelli- 
gent population that believed he had the ability to 
charm the people of New York as he had often 
charmed the people at home. 



220 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The desire to see and to hear such an unusual group 
of distinguished authors drew to Chickering Hall an 
almost equally distinguished audience. An hour be- 
fore the doors were opened the sidewalk, steps and 
stairway were densely packed. It was not easy to get 
within half a block of the hall. Inside, the audience 
filled every available foot of space, standing several 
rows deep around the walls of the famous auditorium. 
Many distinguished men sat on the platform — Charles 
H. Parkhurst, Lyman Abbott, Robert Collyer and 
many others, including representatives from the maga- 
zines and the leading publishing houses. 

The Readings were in the afternoon and the second 
day program was as follows: 

James Russell Lowell — *The Finding of the Lyre," 
''Aladdin,^' and 'The Courtin\" 

Colonel Richard M. Johnson — "The Early Majority of 
Mr. Thomas Watts.'' 

Thomas Nelson Page — Christmas scene from ''Unc' 
Edinburgh's Drowndin'." 

Charles Dudley Warner — ''The Hunting of the Bear." 

Frank R, Stockton — "Prince Hassock's March." 

William Dean Howells — "The Breaking of Dan's En- 
gagement." 

George William Curtis — "The New Livery" from the 
"Potiphar Papers." 

At the close of the program there was confusion in 
the audience and some show of impatience, for it had 
been, as often before, shown that an author's ability 
to write well was no guarantee that he could read 
well. Mr. Lowell, the chairman, promptly rose and 
announced that letters had been received from Ban- 
croft, Holmes, Whittier, Henry James, Robert Louis 



THE SILVER LINING 221 

Stevenson, John Hay, General Lew Wallace and others, 
and then lifting his hand for silence and to check those 
who had turned to leave, he said: 

"Ladies and Gentlemen — I want to thank you for 
your kind attention without which these readings could 
not have been a success. I also desire to thank Mr. 
James Whitcomb Riley, who has so generously con- 
sented to favor us again to-day with one of his de- 
lightful selections. I confess with no little chagrin 
and sense of my own loss, that when yesterday after- 
noon, from the platform, I presented him to a similar 
assemblage, I was almost a stranger to his poems. 
Since then I have been reading one of his books, and 
in it I have discovered so much of high worth and 
tender quality that I deeply regret that I had not long 
before been acquainted with his work. I have been 
so impressed with the tenderness and beauty of the 
poems that I read that I almost hope he will give one 
of them now. But whether it be one I have read or 
something else, I am sure it will be something good. 
To-day, in presenting him, I can say to you of my own 
knowledge that you are to have the pleasure of listen- 
ing to the voice of a true poet." 

The applause which followed amounted to a demon- 
stration. It would be erroneous to conclude that it 
was all for Riley. Lowell had been idolized both after- 
noons. But Riley had been so conspicuously success- 
ful the first day that his reappearance, unannounced 
on the program, the second afternoon, was the signal 
for an ovation. The first day, to quote Miss Jean- 
nette Gilder, "he sailed in as though he had been 
bom to the stage and gave a performance that the 
most illustrious comedian might envy.'* The New 



222 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

York papers acknowledged him "the position in 
American literature, which his genius and versatility 
deserved/' The first day he recited ''When the Frost 
Is on the Punkin," one of "those little things," said 
the Herald, "which are not spoiled by being well done. 
He did it so well as to excite screams of laughter, but 
in the 'Object Lesson' he tickled the intellectual palate 
with as excellent a piece of mimicry as Chickering 
Hall ever saw and capped the climax of the after- 
noon's enjoyment." 

Just before Riley appeared, George W. Cable recited 
in dramatic style a selection from his story "Grand 
Point." Then, said the World, "the stranger and the 
success of the occasion was introduced. This was 
James Whitcomb Riley. In a poem and a character 
sketch he sunk the author in the actor. The fun of 
the other authors shriveled up into bitter patches of 
melancholy in the bright light of Riley's humor. Doc- 
tor Howard Crosby, who occupied a conspicuous seat 
on the stage, laughed until he looked as though he 
would faint, and finally in sheer nonsectarian uproar- 
iousness poked Bishop Potter in the ribs and subsided." 

Riley's selection for the second afternoon firmly 
established his reputation. Here was his golden 
opportunity to justify his claims for dialect, and he 
did it with "Nothin' To Say," a characteristic poem in 
which is shown an old father's tenderness to his 
motherless daughter when she tells him she is going 
to be married. In reciting it, it was said, the poet 
gained the approval of the entire audience. "The 
silence was intense with applause." Both men and 
women manifested deep emotion. 



THE SILVER LINING 223 

For years there had been among the scholarly what 
seemed to Riley an unthinking prejudice against his 
dialect which he had not been able to dispel. He held 
that the use of dialect was necessary to the full inter- 
pretation of certain phases of human life. The 
scholarly were grieved because it was a blemish on re- 
fined speech. It was therefore a decided victory, when 
in New York he gained the applause of the intellectuals. 
One of the most erudite critics in the list said that 
"Nothin' To Say" did not depend on the vernacular. 
*'The feeling, the pathos of the touching little poem 
gives it its value, and the dialect is simply its strongest 
and most fitting expression." A popular book, 
Winning of the West, was then maturing in the mind 
of Theodore Roosevelt. Riley's purpose in the Amer- 
ican Authors' Readings was the winning of the East 
— and he won it. 

Seated in the front row of the hall was the wife of 
a United States Senator, who had heard Riley recite 
"Farmer Whipple," when he was "training" with the 
Wizard Oil Company in Lima, Ohio. At that early 
date she had recognized his genius and predicted his 
fame. She was not therefore surprised when Chicker- 
ing Hall rang with applause. 

Naturally the center of delight over the New York 
enthusiasm was in Indiana. "The whole town — and 
State," Riley wrote Nye from Indianapolis a fortnight 
after the Readings, "has been upside-down about the 
New York success, and in consequence I have been 
giving my full time to shaking hands and trying to 
look altogether un swollen by my triumph — if I may 
so term it. Positively you have no idea of the gen- 



224 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

eral and continued rejoicing of the press and friends. 
Were it any other distinguished citizen than myself, 
it would turn his head; but as it isi I am bearing it, 
Bill, about as you know I kin, when I set my jaws to 
it." As Nye said, "It took weeks for the general 
enthusiasm of the State to get back into its banks 
again." 

Hoosiers were particularly flattered over the recog- 
nition Lowell had given their poet. Four years before 
Riley had sent to Lowell at Cambridge a copy of The 
Old Swimmin'-Hole. Lowell was in England and did 
not receive it. "Why have I not heard more of Riley?" 
he remarked to a friend on the second day of the 
Readings. "Tell me all you know about him. I sat 
up last night till two o'clock reading his verse. Noth- 
ing that the poets have written in this country for 
years has touched me so deeply as *Knee-Deep in 
June.' " This was a tribute without a string to it. 
It made no difference to Lowell that Riley had been 
born and reared west of the Alleghanies. 

While receiving congratulations Riley gave interest- 
ing impressions of the authors he had met. Lowell 
— younger than anticipated, clad in a black suit, a man 
of medium height and polished manners with grace 
and felicity of expression. Clemens — innocent, art- 
less, brimming with undiluted mirth, did not possess 
the fatal gift of beauty but was better-looking than 
Bill Nye. Stoddard — ^the critic, the skilled anatomist 
in all literary fractures, sprains and dislocations. 
Eggleston — of tall figure and substantial frame, 
whose shock of hair might be taken for a hazel thicket 
in his native heath. HowELLS — ^with the youthful 
atmosphere still about him that a score of years before 



THE SILVER LINING 225 

fascinated Lowell at Elmwood. Stockton — not so 
tall, yet, in quaint manner, features, eyes and expres- 
sion, resembling Myron Eeed. Cable — delicate in 
figure, a platform favorite and funny as ever. 
Curtis — ^hale and sturdy, of vital force, with sonorous 
voice, and sound of frame as a Norseland Viking. 
Warner — ^another Viking, but in manner simple, quiet, 
delectable. Page — a young man of commercial as- 
pect, but wonderfully gifted as a reader, all things 
conspiring to put before his audience a drama of 
actors and visible scenery. Last and not least, a man 
who was touched with the feeling of a poet's infirm- 
ities, Robert Collyer, who, somewhere in the vast 
city, lived in a modest brick house, no butler to guard 
his door, no card or password necessary to greet him ; 
the hale, sturdy yeoman with hair white as snow and 
cheeks ruddy as summer apples. 

While friends and the press were rejoicing, the first 
edition of another book was being exhausted, the poet's 
third volume, "the darling of the list," it was thought 
then as many think to-day. This was the book that 
kept Lowell awake till two in the morning. "I have 
been at work on a book," Riley said to a friend in 
October, 1887; "if it proves successful I shall be the 
happiest little man in the world — for I have been long 
under the harrow." "A beautiful book in press," he 
wrote Mrs. Catherwood, "dedicated to my mother, 160 
pages of puore poetry." "Want to talk with you a 
few weeks," he wrote Robert Mclntyre, "but of course 
can do nothing of the kind. Up and at it as fast as a 
Mussulman's screech and new rhymes can wobble 
into ranks. Am writing better stuff than ever, with 
my best book now in hands of publishers. Thousands 



226 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

of 'em sold and the money purt-nigh right in my 
pocket — and out again. We call the volume After- 
zvhiles.'* 

It was pure poetry, although Riley sometimes 
feigned to dislike it. As Hamlin Garland said at the 
time, the volume was unique in American literature. 
Never before had such simple, genuine expression 
been given in verse to homely things. 

Nye entreated Riley not to forget the East in the 
iirst glow of the wonderful Afterwhiles. "The book 
does not weigh half a pound," he wrote for the New 
York World, ''but it ought not to be judged by that. 
Here are thoughts that have floated about in every- 
body's head. It is a pleasing task to make two smiles 
where one grew — so I am told — ^but to do it in such 
a way as to retain self-respect and leave the reader in 
the same condition, to purify a man's moral system by 
letting the daylight and ozone of laughter into his 
damp and dismal soul, to make folly appear foolish 
and make humor do something besides draw its salary, 
ought to be considered a laudable ambition. Riley 
has done this. He has made music with the homely 
chords of Hoosierdom, made it with the zeal of an 
artist and the love of a patriot." 

Afteriuhiles marks a closer and a more remunera- 
tive relation between the poet and the book market, 
for which he was ever grateful and always indebted 
to his brother-in-law, Henry Eitel. The impression 
was abroad — and there was ground for it — that the 
poet knew about as much about business as an Aus- 
tralian kangaroo knows about The Iliad. He had 
printed his poems in the Indianapolis Journal and 
Herald, and other periodicals; but how "in the name 



THE SILVER LINING 227 

of the Saints" could he recover them? Original 
manuscripts were stored away in musty trunks, which 
he could not find, or, if he could, he had not the 
patience or the heart to go through. Who would col- 
lect them? Who would search scrap-books and the 
newspaper files ? This his brother-in-law did — assisted 
by Mrs. Eitel and a secretary. After four or five 
months of patient, faithful work, the large stock of 
poems was accumulated for book publication. 

Since the Park Theater Benefit (1879) Riley's 
public appearance in Indianapolis had been known 
as *'his annual entertainment.'* As actor and speaker 
he had improved each year, without sacrificing his 
originality — the special mark which distinguished 
him from other entertainers. Each year he had been 
received with enthusiasm. After the New York re- 
ception the Indiana capital thought the poet had 
earned another '^testimony of its admiration," and 
this it gave at the Grand Opera House in January, 
1888. 

It was an evening for public celebration — ^the poet 
had been accepted by the authorities in literature. 
Elijah W. Halford of the Indianapolis Journal pre- 
sided, and in an interesting address briefly sketched 
the poet's life. ''In looking over this magnificent 
audience," he said, introducing Riley, "I am impressed 
with the fact that there is at least one conspicuous 
difference between a prophet and a poet. While a 
prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, 
a poet — our poet — may well felicitate himself that he 
is most esteemed and admired where best known, and 
that it is amongst his friends and neighbors, in the 
state of his birth and the city of his home, that the 



V 



228 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

warmest need of recognition and welcome awaits 
him." 

Mr. Riley recited the three selections he had given 
in New York, together with other verses more famil- 
iar to the home audience. Then followed the new 
poem, "The Old Man and Jim," and part of the prose 
sketch, *'The Boy From Zeeny." 

Near the end of the program the audience had its 
first vision of "Little Orphant Annie" as she appeared 
before the footlights. She was "deliciously" intro- 
duced by the poet, who told of his first vision of her 
in his boyhood, when the slender wisp of a girl, clad 
in black and a summer hat came one cold winter day 
to the old Riley homestead—and when he had finished, 
his hearers were quite familiar with her elfish ways 
and the goblins that'll get you ef you don't watch out. 

He closed, modestly, without a word about his New 
York success. Indeed his modesty was always a pass- 
port to the love and applause of the audience. "I de- 
sire to thank you," he said, bidding his hearers good 
night, "for the warm interest in my career, and for 
the great help and encouragement you have been to 
me. I can make no return except to express my 
heartfelt gratitude and cherish as long as life lasts the 
remembrance of the good that has come to me through 
my friends." 

While all rejoiced over the Indianapolis testimonial, 
there was a feeling that it should have been wider in 
its scope, should be the homage of the Central West, 
and this feeling was crystallized by the Western Asso- 
ciation of Writers at a dinner in the poet's honor at 
the Denison Hotel, Indianapolis, in October. One 
smiles in this year of grace, 1922, with such names on 



THE SILVER LINING 229 

the scroll of international fame as Ade, Nicholson, 
Tarkington, McCutcheon, Mrs. Porter and many- 
others, that the new writers of that generation, the 
year, 1888, should have been so deeply concerned about 
the place of Indiana in American literature. But so 
they were. 

The W. A. W., dubbed the "Writers' Singing Bee," 
had been organized a year or so before, and many 
years after 1888 met annually at Winona, Indiana. 
The Denison parlor in which the Association spread 
its banquet was beautifully decorated and forty guests, 
including many writers, flanked the poet on either 
side the banquet table. Benjamin S. Parker, presi- 
dent of the Association, gave a sketch of the growth 
of western literature. Honorable William Dudley 
Foulke was the toastmaster of the evening. 

In response to the toast *'Our Guest," Riley could 
but feebly convey the full sense of his gratitude. "The 
honor you so generously bestow," he said, "is so 
munificent that, in comparison, my deserving seems 
to me a very trivial consideration; so that, while 
grateful beyond all definition, I am no less pathetically 
reminded of my present unworthiness, and the ac- 
companying fear that even the most generous future 
may, in that regard, still find me a delinquent. There- 
fore, with more loyalty than language and more tears 
than wine — God bless us every one!" 

Mrs. M. L. Andrews, secretary of the W. A. W., 
read letters from absent friends. Having been nomi- 
nated for President of the United States, Benjamin 
Harrison could not attend the banquet, but the Asso- 
ciation understood that, in case of his election, Riley 
should be chosen Poet Laureate of America. 



230 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The letters were cordial to an inspiring degree. "I 
drink to the health of James Whitcomb Riley at 
home," wrote James Boyle O'Reilly, "and I will ponder 
on the fact that a man can rise in Indianapolis a 
thousand miles from Boston, and strike a literary note 
that the whole country turns its ear to hear." Many 
other letters from eastern authors were written in the 
same spirit. Three are quoted : 

New York, October 18, 1888. 
Mrs. M. L. Andrews, Indianapolis, Indiana. 
Dear Friend: 

The time is past when anybody can attract attention 
by admiring James Whitcomb Riley. It is getting too 
general everywhere. But the wild and woolly West- 
erns who began to set a heap by him when he had not 
yet caught the eye of the speaker, now that no geo- 
graphical or isothermal lines — I use the word isother- 
mal because it is euphonious and can certainly do no 
harm at this time when we are all acquainted — I say 
now that no geographical or isothermal lines pretend 
to bound his just fame, we who knew him early may 
be seen at this moment to swell with pardonable pride. 

Looking over the career of James Whitcomb Riley, 
and carefully examining the difficult and dangerous 
route through which he has passed, I am amazed that 
a man who knows so little about how to get anywhere 
on earth should have got there so early. I can not 
fully understand it yet. Certainly Mr. Riley moves in 
a mysterious way his wonders to perform. 

I unite with you all in the warmest expression of 
regard possible for your guest, and proceed at once 
to regret my physical inability to be with you in fact 
as I am in wish, to-night. 

Sincerely yours, 

Edgar Wilson Nye. 



THE SILVER LINING 231 

Hartford, October 3, 1888. 
Mr. W. D. Foulke and Others : 

Dear Sirs and Misses — For the sake of the strong 
love and admiration which I feel for Riley, I would 
go if I could, were there even no way but by slow 
freight, but I am finishing a book begun three years 
ago. I see land ahead; if I stick to the oar without 
intermission I shall be at anchor in thirty days; if I 
stop to moisten my hands I am gone. So I send Riley 
half of my heart, and Nye the other half, if he is 
there, and the rest of me will stay regretfully behind 
to continue business at the old stand. 
Truly yours, 

S. L. Clemens. 

Ashfield, Massachusetts, October 5, 1888. 
Dear Madam: 

I am sincerely sorry that I am unable to accept your 
kind invitation to the dinner in honor of Mr. Riley, a 
delightful and friendly project which you may be sure 
that I shall not reveal. I was greatly impressed by 
the power of Mr. Riley over an audience when I heard 
him with sympathy and admiration at the Authors' 
Readings last year in New York, and the tender 
pathos and natural humor of his verse had already 
marked him as a true poet of the people. He will be 
an interpreter of that Western American life which 
has other aspects and interests than those which are 
generally familiar. Its spirit, we all know as enter- 
prise, energy and generosity. But he shows us that 
it is also beauty and grace and human sympathy. I 
join with all my heart in wishing him ever-increasing 
success, and with most friendly regard, I am, 
Very truly yours, 

George William Curtis, 

A pleasant feature of the banquet was the presenta- 
tion to Riley of a mask of the head of John Keats, the 



232 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

gift of the Century Magazine, "Then the party broke 
up wishing the poet health, wealth and prosperity." 

''My dear Man," wrote Joel Chandler Harris from 
the Atlanta Constitution, "did I not tell you that you 
were the Coming Man? Now that you have really 
come, I send you congratulations, together with the 
love of your faithful Uncle Remus." 

Going immediately to lecture engagements, Riley 
had not then the time to reply to congratulations, but 
his answer to the editor of the New York Sun could 
not be delayed. Already the Sun was thinking of 
Riley as a national poet — "one who is read and appre- 
ciated by persons representing all classes of a com- 
munity without distinction of education or social 
sympathies." Later the Sun affirmed that Riley came 
"nearer than any other American maker of verse to 
meeting the definition." Riley's answer was dated — 

Buffalo, New York, October 22, 1888. 
Mr. Charles A. Dana. 
Dear Sir and friend: 

A recent letter from you to literary friends at home 
did me such honor that I am at utter loss to thank 
you fittingly. Your good comment I would rather 
have than fine gold; so it is that, although a very 
wealthy man is now addressing you, he still remains 
too poor in speech to pay you a tithe of his gratitude. 
Simply you must know that your expressed confidence 
and interest in my effort strengthens and makes bet- 
ter my resolve to righteously deserve it. Steadily 
ahead too will I move in quest always of the way 
wherein I hope to find your approbation. 

Faithfully and gratefully yours, 

James Whitcomb Riley. 



THE SILVER LINING 233 

In past years "there had been hours/* Riley said, 
"when life seemed stark as a granary floor, and the 
mist-bedrizzled moon came crawling to me like a 
sickly child/' So far as those hours related to literary 
recognition, they had passed away. He had been ad- 
mitted to the magic circle of the world's recognized 
men of genius. The sable cloud had turned its "silver 
lining to the night." 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 

THIS alliance, known to the lecture platform as 
the Nye-Riley Combination, had its beginning 
in 1886. Prior to that time there had been 
joint meetings but they had been informal. Authors' 
readings were the rage. A year before Mark Twain 
and George Cable had swung round the circuit together 
and the tour had been popular and financially suc- 
cessful. 

The formal opening, at Indianapolis, in February, 
was a triple entertainment, the third "funny man" 
being Eugene Field, then the humorist of the Chicago 
News. As was expected the three-star bill drew a 
full house; "packed it,'* Robert Burdette said, "until 
people began to fall out of the windows." A more 
delighted audience never laughed its approval. Aside 
from the regular numbers — Nye in the "Cow Phenom- 
enon," and "Robust Cyclones"; Field in the "Romance 
of a Waterbury Watch"; and Riley in "Deer Crick" 
and "Fessler's Bees" — there was considerable sparring 
among the participants, which keyed the audience to 
the G string of enjoyment. According to the program 
the order of appearance was Nye, Field and Riley, but 
when the curtain rang up Riley came forward first. 
"I desire to make a brief statement," he said, "con- 
cerning my friend from Wisconsin. He is the victim 
of an hereditary affliction, which makes him morbidly 

234 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 235 

sensitive. When the audience laughs he is not always 
certain whether they are laughing at his humor or his 
physical defect, and thus he is humiliated and embar- 
rassed, sometimes to the extent of forgetting his lines. 
Out of consideration for his feelings I therefore ask 
the audience to refrain from laughing while he recites 
his piece. I will add that his affliction is a slight ten- 
dency to premature baldness.'' 

Riley retired and, according to Burdette, the audi- 
ence put on a decorous, sympathetic look when Nye 
came on making his first bow to an Indiana congrega- 
tion. "He was bald as a brickyard. The house gasped 
and then incontinently roared." When he could com- 
mand silence, Nye said that Riley had summoned him 
to Indianapolis by telegram, a compliment indeed and 
he was glad to come. As the entertainment proceeded, 
he explained, the audience would observe that he and 
Field would be in view on the stage at the same time, 
but he and Riley would not appear at the same time. 
The separate appearance of himself and the Hoosier 
"star*' was explained in the Riley telegram, which 
with the permission of the audience Nye would read : 
Edgar W, Nye — Come and appear at my reception. 
Be svre to bring a dress suit, P. S, Don't forget the 
trousers, I have a pair of suspenders, "For a mo- 
ment,'* said Burdette, "the jest hung fire. Then some- 
body tittered, the fuze sizzled through the boxes, down 
the aisle, and then up into the gallery." 

The Combination thus auspiciously launched with 
Field's blessings, went forth to take its place in the 
amusement world as "the Rarest of All Humorous 
Novelties." The first season the attendance was not 
always so large that "people fell out of the windows." 



236 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

One ugly night there was a sparse congregation in 
Danville, Illinois. In deference to Nye there was no 
"brass band music." He had had rough treatment 
enough, he said, having been picked up by a Manitoba 
simoon and thrown across a township. 

Later in the evening he said he had been studying 
zoology down in the North Carolina mountains. There 
he had discovered a cow, hitched to a vehicle — "the 
most versatile and ambidextrous of the species," he 
said, "if I may be allowed to use a term that is so far 
above my station in life. To see that cow descending 
a steep mountain road at a rapid gait and striving in 
her poor weak manner to keep out of the way of a 
small Jackson Democratic wagon loaded with tobacco 
was a sight that would stir society to its borders." 

When the humorists first came out on the stage, 
some doubt existed as to their ability to entertain. 
Nye was not graceful owing to "his height and longi- 
tude," and Riley seemed embarrassed in "not knowing 
what to do with his hands." But it wasn't long before 
the little congregation began to shout for joy and so 
continued until the resources for shouting were ex- 
hausted. 

Ten days later, in Ohio, their way fairly streamed 
with success. In a letter to Hitt, Riley ran to ex- 
travagance about it: 

Cleveland, Ohio, March 6, 1886. 
Dear George: 

Last night we bagged the town — a success not even 
second to our Indianapolis ovation. Nye is simply 
superb on the stage — and no newspaper report can 
half-way reproduce either the curious charm of his 
drollery — ^his improvisations — inspirations and so 




The Poet and His Devoted Friend, Joel Chandler Harris 




From a Portrait or the 



Poet by His Life-long Friend, T. C. Steele 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 237 

forth. At times his auditors are hysterical with de- 
light. We repeat to-night by special request of every- 
body. Newspapers all sent reporters, quite an audi- 
ence in themselves, as they sat in betabled phalanx in 
the orchestra-pen, and laughed and whooped and 
yelled and cried, wholly oblivious of their duty half 
the time. 

As ever, J. W. R. 

To another intimate Riley wrote that he was on the 
road constantly, and working between trains like a 
pack horse. March thirtieth he wrote as follows: 
**Just home from a long but very successful trip about 
the country. With Nye for company the trials of 
travel are lessened till now I am almost content with 
what seems my principal mission here on earth, i. e., 
to spread over and run all around it like a ringworm." 

Nye also discovered traits in the Hoosier Poet with 
which the public was unfamiliar. "Many who know 
Riley by his poems," he wrote for an eastern paper, 
"have a very erroneous idea of his personality. He is 
a thorough boy with those whom he knows and knows 
well. Many people believe themselves to be quite 
intimate with him who really know nothing of him at 
all. Those who are most free to approach him and 
lean upon him and confide in him, sometimes go away 
with a wrong impression. Nothing freezes him up 
sooner than the fresh and gurgling human pest who 
yearns to say he is intimate with some one who is well 
known, the curculio which builds its nest in the rind 
of another's reputation. Such a person would meet a 
cool and quiet little gentleman who would look out the 
window during the interview and lock the door after 
it had terminated; but a two-year-old child, with its 



238 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

natural sincerity, would be knowing him at his best 
inside of ten minutes. Like most men who have 
learned to despise what is fraudulent and false, he flies 
to the unbought love of children/' 

The fall of 1886 was inauspicious for the Combina- 
tion. "We started out," Riley said, "to chase our 
prospects over the globe," but soon Nye's health failed 
and he had to go south. In December Nye wrote Riley 
from North Carolina: "It is a queer country, but I 
think it has considerable timber for the ambition of a 
poet. Again and again I am tempted to emit a poem 
here, but so far have controlled myself. I shall think 
of you all by yourself provoking the laughter and tears 
of your audiences and yearning for a recess during 
which you can retire to the dressing-room and com- 
mune with the hired man." 

In the spring of 1887 Nye had regained his health — 
"weighed," he said, "175 lbs. as the crow flies." Riley 
had been on the road through the winter. "Glad you 
are talking to them all the time," Nye wrote him, 
"though it is not so blasted pleasant to roam over the 
land all by yourself, studying time tables when you 
want to read other things, and creeping in through the 
back way to the stage accompanied by an apprehensive 
man who is going to introduce you, and whose mouth 
is very, very dry, and you glide softly with him among 
mouldy scenes and decayed properties that smell like 
a haunted house. Oh, Sir, is it not joyous? Is it not 
fraught with merriment and chock-full of mirth?" 

In August, Nye was glad to see "Nothin' To Say" in 
the magazine — "but cold type!" how different it was 
from "the delightful, pathetic simplicity" Riley gave 
the poem on the platform. "I tell the people of the 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 239 

World/' Nye wrote, '*that I would go farther to hear 
you than any other man who treads the boards." 

After lecturing steadily for a half-year, Riley spent 
the summer at Greenfield, Indiana, where he said he 
could "nestle in memories of Mother Goose and hear 
the jingles of infancy." "You would be surprised to 
see how well I look," he wrote a friend, "and how 
really well I am. Somehow or other I just won't die 
— can't understand it. What would you advise? — 
Marriage, or more Poetry?" 

In the autumn Nye appeared alone on the New Eng- 
land circuit, and afterward wrote Riley, "I wore a 
plug hat, but conversed freely with the common 
people. Everywhere I went I was received with pas- 
sionate reserve and shovm the public schools and the 
mean temperature." 

From town to town Riley was flitting through Ohio 
and Indiana, at fifty dollars a night. February 15 
(1888) he and Nye were together in Chicago for a 
second benefit for the Press Club. The papers next 
day featured the program as two hours of solid enjoy- 
ment. There were such captions and lines as — Big 
Grins at Central Music Hall — The Hoosier Poet and 
the Unforgiven Humorist Torture an Immense Audi- 
ence — Nye Tickles Them— Riley Makes a Hit — The 
Poet and His "Lyre" Send Home an Audience of Ach- 
ing Sides and Tear-Dimmed Eyes. 

Nye and Riley were each on the program for three 
selections but the encores trebled the number. In 
substance and in part (with parenthetical notes on 
the applause inserted afterward by Nye) the press re- 
port was as follows: The two gentlemen appeared 
before the public in full-dress suits — and their bright- 



240 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

est witticisms. Riley stepped from the waiting-room 
in a businesslike manner that contrasted widely with 
his delightful poetry, and almost before the audience 
knew it he was down where the footlights ought to be. 
Everybody applauded and again and again his bow 
had to be repeated. When quiet was restored he gave 
a piece of homely, wholesome advice to the man who 
is always finding fault with the weather. His hearers 
had read his poem, but they had not fully grasped the 
truth concealed under the garb of simple language. 
They had another and more delicately beautiful ver- 
sion of it when it came from its author's lips. At its 
conclusion after a storm of applause, he told the story 
of an old patriot and his soldier son ("The Old Man 
and Jim") which gave the audience a sense of grief 
seldom experienced before. The poet saw in the sea 
of faces a "suspicious glistening" of the eyes. 

Then Nye stole out past the grand piano (upheaval 
of popular opinion). When he reached the middle of 
the stage he stopped to remove his eyeglasses and 
smile (applause while the speaker blushed). "It 
affords me pleasure," he began, "to play a return en- 
gagement for the Chicago Press Club (renewed ap- 
plause). I have a great reverence for the press. It 
is a great engine of destruction (demonstration). I 
often think of what might have been the fate of many 
great men without the press. Take me for example, 
or Lydia E. Pinkham for instance (tittering and 
cackling). I suppose I should have made the open- 
ing speech but Mr. Riley kindly relieved me of that 
onerous duty; so I can get down to business. Poets 
as you probably know have throughout history been 
accompanied by their lyres (laughter) . Riley appears 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 241 

before you to-night as the poet; I suppose he has his 
lyre; if not I am with him (redoubled laughter while 
the speaker caresses the bald spot on his head). I 
asked a man while riding into a city the other day if 
he had heard my last lecture. He said he hoped he 
had (giggling) . So I am getting up a new lecture in 
which I can reel off humor by the yard. Horace 
Greeley says that a lecture is successful when more 
remain in the hall than go out. I have talked with 
some of my friends about it and they suggest that I 
get a brass band to play half an hour before it and 
half an hour after. One critic says I would make a 
hit if the band played through the whole lecture." 
(Gas flickers and rafters shake.) 

Then Riley took the audience to the banks of Deer 
Creek and while there told them about the woman who 
swallowed a tree toad. Later he bade his hearers good 
night in his "peroration on the peanut." 

In his last number Nye sketched a southerner "with 
a lambrequin fringe under the chin," and then crowned 
the success of the evening with the story of a Swedish 
dog "with whom he had been associated on the plains." 
And so the program "came to a merry end and the 
audience laughed themselves into the street." 

There were other engagements in the neighborhood 
of Chicago. After the entertainment at South Bend, 
Indiana, a local poet, riding home on a street-car, ex- 
pressed his joy in rhyme: 

"Nye and Riley, Riley and Nye: 
Grin and chuckle, sob and sigh! 
Never had such fun by half. 
Knew not whether to cry or laugh. 



242 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Jest and joke and preach and sing, 
They can do most anything — • 
Make you laugh or make you cry — 
Dear old Riley! Rare Bill NyeP' 

In April, Riley made his second appearance in 
Chickering Hall, New York, this time at a testimonial 
performance to the veteran manager, Major James B. 
Pond. Besides Nye and Riley, George W. Cable and 
Max O'Rell were on the program. *1 shall never for- 
get the first time I saw Riley," the celebrated French- 
man wrote afterward in his American Notes. **He 
made an impression upon me such as no other man 
has done. It was at a banquet in New York, given 
by Augustin Daly, in honor of Henry Irving and Ellen 
Terry, at the close of their season in America. There 
were many eloquent speeches and toasts made that 
night, for the party was a brilliant one. I remember 
little about them now how^ever as only one impressed 
me, I may say. That was a plain, homely-looking 
man, who on a simple announcement arose and recited 
'Out to Old Aunt Mary's.' I acknowledge that I am 
rather callous. I surprised myself before that man 
had finished his recitation by finding tears coursing 
down my cheeks. Before he concluded there was a 
moisture in the eyes of every one present. Ellen 
Terry, a queen in her sympathies, was almost over- 
come with emotion. That was the first time I heard 
James Whitcomb Riley, and I can understand why 
Americans love him." 

In the autumn Riley joined his colleague in the 
World office, where arrangements were completed for 
a tour on a comprehensive scale, under the manage- 
ment of Major Pond. Before reaching New York 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 243 

Riley wrote Nye as follows: "Soon hope to open up 
entire budget and hear your well-beloved chortle. 
Simply, what suits you suits me. I am so impatient 
to be in the hands of those who will protect me from 
myself. I would not travel a mile and three-quarters 
alone, in any direction, either in or out of a Railway 
guide, for any money on earth, were I not compelled 
to. Soon I will moisten my hands and pray that I 
may be utterly emancipated from all the ache and cark 
and care of the one-man-show business. Then only 
will I be supremely blessed, and at peace with God 
and man." 

For the first time Riley remained long enough in 
New York to become a familiar figure on Broadway. 
Enveloped in his large overcoat he made a picturesque 
appearance. Strangers took notice of his Roman nose 
and his blue eyes alight with merriment. He did not 
wear long poetic locks; so that it was said, when he 
removed his hat, the phrenological bumps on his head 
were as conspicuous as wax figures in a museum. 

It was rumored, absurdly, that he was writing a 
series of letters on politics. He had recently voted for 
Harrison and had participated in the wild demonstra- 
tions in Indianapolis over the GeneraFs election. *'No, 
I am not in New York to vnrite on politics," he replied 
to reporters. "Bill Nye and I start out to-night at 
Poughkeepsie on a reading-talking tour. He talks and 
I read — read my own poems, not because they are 
better than others but because I know them better. 
We are booked for the whole season. We shall cruise 
about in this vicinity for a time and then go south." 

Up to that time the Nye-Riley tour was the most 
extensive ever spread upon the American map by the 



244 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Pond Bureau, reaching in time from November to 
May, and in place from Montgomery, Alabama, to 
Minneapolis, and from Boston to Portland, Oregon. 
The tour was to end in Canada. 

The fourth appearance happened to be an afternoon 
engagement (November 15), a Benefit for the Actors' 
Fund, at the Broadway Theater, New York, in which 
Nye and Riley took their places with others in a 
variety program — a gathering of the stars of the pro- 
fession. Here Riley heard Booth and Barrett in the 
fifth act of Julius Caesar. Denman Thompson occu- 
pied a box with his family, as did Mary Anderson also, 
surrounded by a number of beautiful young women. 
Altogether it was a famous afternoon. 

Two days later the combination appeared before 
and to the delight of the fun-loving public of Washing- 
ton. Nye's dog story and Riley's bear story were the 
most amusing yarns that had been told in the capital 
since the days of Artemus Ward. 

When the poet reached Hampton Roads he found 
time to write William Carey of the Century: 

Norfolk, Virginia, November 24, 1888. 
Dear Carey: 

In the rush and whirl of business I think it will 
give you a gasp of rest to know that Nye and I are 
junketing along the road. So far our experiences 
have been delightful. At Richmond we missed Nelson 
Page, but met such a chorus of his friends as to make 
the visit a most memorable event. Were shown the 
beautiful old city "from Genesis to the Day of Judg- 
ment." Called at "Washington's headquarters," but 
found the gentleman absent, while the cherry tree that 
he had planted still flourished and went on being lied 
about with never a lisp or whisper of reproach. Saw 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 245 

General Lee's recumbent figure laid in matchless 
marble rest, and Valentine whose lulling chisel 
smoothed the eyelids down and kissed each feature to 
its white repose. Three or four different times I 
managed to shake the sculptor's hand. Things like 
that help a fellow whose temperament is not exactly 
plumb on every side. 

As Ever, 

James Popcorn Riley. 

At Macon, Georgia, in the Lanier House, Riley com- 
pleted "The Old Soldier's Story,'' while Nye, to please 
the local committee, was riding over rough roads, 
listening to stories badly told and seeing things for 
the "first time" he had seen many times before. Since 
leaving New York Riley had ridden and lunched and 
dined with committees until he was beginning to look 
and feel like a shadow on the scenery. He had there- 
fore declined to accompany the committee in Macon. 

"When we went down to dinner," said Riley, "I 
made up my mind I would tell Nye another stale story, 
such a story as I knew he had been feeding on that 
afternoon. I had, unbeknown to him, been rehears- 
ing the story for several days. I began to tell him as 
earnestly as though it was newer than the hour, the 
oldest story I ever heard. I heard a clown tell it in 
the Robinson and Lake Circus when I was a boy, and 
the first eternity only knows how old it had to be 
before a clown would be allowed to use it. Nye heard 
it long before he ever heard me tell it — ^the old man's 
story of the soldier carrying his wounded comrade off 
the battle-field. Well, I dragged the story out as long 
as I could, just to weary Nye; told it in the forgetful 
fashion of an old man with confused memory ; told the 



246 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

point two or three times before I came to it; went 
back again to pick up dropped stitches in the web; 
wandered and maundered, made it as long and dreary 
as I knew how. Nye received the narrative with con- 
vulsions of merriment. He choked over his meat and 
drink until he quit trying to eat and just listened, 
giggled, chuckled and roared. He declared it was the 
best thing he had ever heard me do and insisted that 
I put it in our program. This, at first, I declined to 
do, but Nye was so earnest, so persistent about it, that 
a week later, at Louisville, Kentucky, I think it was, 
I told the story to a thousand people. In theatrical 
parlance, the galleries fell, the house went wild and I 
had to tell it again." 

A paragraph set down in the fashion of the old 
story-teller, gives a faint idea of the way Riley told it : 

"I heerd an awful funny thing the other day — I 
don't know whether I kin git it off er not, but, any- 
how, ril tell it to you. Well ! — Le's see now how the 
fool-thing goes. Oh, yes! — W'y, there was a feller 
one time — it was durin' the army and this feller that 
I started in to tell you about was in the — war — and — 
there was a big fight a-goin' on, and this feller was 
in the fight — and — it was a big battle and bullets a- 
flyin* ever* which way, and bombshells a-bu'stin', and 
cannon balls a-flyin' 'round promiskus; and this feller 
right in the midst of it, you know, and all excited and 
het up, and chargin' away; and — and the fust thing 
you know along come a cannon ball and shot his head 
off — Hold on here a minute! No, sir; I'm a-gittin' 
ahead of my story ; no, no ; didn't shoot his head off — 
I'm gittin' the cart before the horse there — shot his 
leg off; that was the way; shot his leg off''; (and so 
on). 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 247 

To listen to the story as many elocutionists, after 
hearing Riley, have tried to tell it, is an affliction 
which no audience should have to suffer. The ha-ha- 
ing of the old story-teller, his delicious hesitations, his 
hearty chuckles and bewitching bits of laughter as he 
proceeded — the art of telling it as the poet told it was 
lost forever in his passing. 

Three months after Riley told the story in Louis- 
ville, Mark Twain heard him tell it to three thousand 
people in Tremont Temple, Boston. What Twain's 
impressions of it were, he has told in his delightful 
chapter, "How To Tell A Story": He writes in part: 

"In comic-story form the story is not worth the tell- 
ing. Put into the humorous-story form it takes ten 
minutes, and is about the funniest thing I ever 
listened to — as James Whitcomb Riley tells it. 

"He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old 
farmer who has just heard it for the first time, who is 
innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has 
to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep 
from laughing outright ; and does hold in, but his body 
quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and 
at the end of the ten minutes the audience have 
laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are 
running down their faces. 

"The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and 
unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly simu- 
lated, and the result is a performance which is 
thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art — and 
fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; 
but a machine could tell the other story." 

In December Nye and Riley came from a week in 
Ohio to the Grand Opera House, Indianapolis. Indi- 



248 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ana had just celebrated the seventy-second anniver- 
sary of her admission into the Union, and marked the 
occasion of the first general use of Riley's poems in 
the exercises of the public schools. Riley had been 
absent for some time and the city was eager to give 
him and Nye another overflowing welcome, which it 
did, President-elect Harrison being among the most 
appreciative of the large audience. 

From the day they began touring together, Nye and 
Riley had been coaching each other in voice, gesture, 
posture, and so forth, that they might be at their best 
before the footlights. Each gladly accepted the 
other's instructions. There was one friend, however, 
whose criticism at that time, in Riley's opinion, was 
unsurpassed. He had been helpful from the very be- 
ginning of the poet's platform experience. His last 
word on the subject was written the morning after 
this Indianapolis appearance. 

Indianapolis, December 12, 1889. 
My dear Riley: 

I was at your performance last night and "I never 
laughed so since the Thayers were hung," as Artemus 
Ward used to say. Only in one or two points did it 
seem to me that you could enhance your program^ 
and in these my sense may be at fault. You will for- 
give me then if I point out what might be, as I see it, 
an improvement. I am as jealous of your fame as if 
you belonged to me only, instead of the public. Make 
your own carriage and utterances as dissimilar as pos- 
sible from those you assume in the character you illu- 
strate. For instance, the embarrassed caressing of 
your lips with your hand is inimitable. Be careful 
not to do it when you come on the rostrum as Whit- 
comb Riley. It is next thing to scratching your head 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 249 

or blowing your nose. Avoid any trick of eye or 
gesture that you are to use in caricature or persona- 
tion. Commit thoroughly any little speech or preface 
you have to make. This is a vital point. Make it 
clear that Riley in person is equal in dignity, poise and 
breeding to any in the audience. It is Riley the artist 
who commands laughter, pity, cheers and tears. 

Take this from an old friend — one mean enough to 
be your stepfather before he takes a step farther. 
My health steadily declines but "1 smile on you now 
as of old." 

Your faithful friend, 

Dan Paine. 

Ten years before, in his poem, "Dan Paine," Riley 
had expressed his gratitude to this patron of letters 
on the Indianapolis News. Often, when he sat "in 
gloomy fellowship with care," his heart leaped with 
warm emotions to greet the friend who came to assure 
him of success: 

"A something gentle in thy mien, 

A something tender in thy voice, 
Has made my trouble so serene, 
I can but weep, from very choice. 
And even then my tears, I guess. 
Hold more of sweet than bitterness. 
And more of gleaming shine than rain. 
Because of thy bright smile, Dan Paine. 

"The wrinkles that the years have spun 
And tangled round thy tawny face. 
Are kinked with laughter, every one. 
And fashioned in a mirthful grace. 
And though the twinkle of thine eyes 
Is keen as frost when Summer dies. 
It can not long as frost remain 
While thy warm soul shines out, Dan Paine." 



250 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The combination had opened the year 1889 in New 
York State. Then it had swung westward again 
through Indiana, and onward to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
February came with a date at Madison, Wisconsin, 
and by the end of the month the attraction had re- 
turned to the Atlantic seaboard. Along the way there 
had been correspondence to the effect that ''this is a 
poor lecture town but we think Nye and Riley would 
draw." To annul any false impression about the 
* 'inimitable pair," a circular was widely circulated ex- 
plaining that the "symposium" was not a lecture. 
Those who failed to buy tickets would miss an excel- 
lent chance to add length to their days. The program 
for Springfield, Massachusetts, suggests the character 
of the entertainment in other cities : 

Gilmore's Opera House, 
Springfield, Mass., February 26, 1889. 

NYE AND RILEY 
Programme 

I. Simply a Personal Experience Bill Nye 

II. Studies in Hoosier Dialect 

James Whitcomb Riley 

III. At this Point Mr. Nye Will Interfere 

WITH AN Anecdote Bill Nye 

IV. The Poetry of Commonplace 

James Whitcomb Riley 

V. One of the Author's Literary Gems, 

Given Without Notes and No Ges- 
tures TO Speak of Bill Nye 

VI. Character Sketch James Whitcomb Riley 

VII. A Story from Simple Life Bill Nye 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 251 

VIII. Child Eccentricities James Whitcomb Riley 

IX. Something Else Bill Nye 

X. The Educator James Whitcomb Riley 

In March the management mailed to cities ahead 
another large show bill, giving the report of the com- 
bination's harvest in New York, Boston, and Phila- 
delphia. In the center of the bill was the famous 
cartoon by Walter McDougall, the artist of the New 
York World — Nye sitting astride an elephant's neck, 
with fan in hand and his plug hat on the elephant's 
brow; Riley under an umbrella, with a book of poems 
in his hands, sitting in a chair on the elephant's back ; 
and a broad streamer on the elephant's side — The 
Great Nye and Riley Combined Moral Show — and 
Major Pond leading the **show" with a little rope tied 
to the elephant's trunk. 

There was every prospect of a successful season in 
the mountain region and the Pacific slope, but in April 
the tour suddenly ended at Kansas City, owing to ill- 
ness in Nye's family. The combination was worn out 
by the trials of the road — every week-day night as Nye 
said, and sometimes a matinee, or a "sacred concert" 
on Sunday. "I am tired of making a holy show of 
myself. This is the business," he added, "that makes 
a man want to take a swift horse, a zealous bird dog 
and an improved double-barrel duck destroyer and 
commune with nature." 

"I am not writing any thing now," Riley said to a 
Kansas City reporter. "When this engagement is 
over I want to hunt some big, lonely grave, crawl into 
it and pull the green covering over me for a dead- 
earnest rest." 



252 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The interviews, copied quite generally throughout 
the country, afforded the press opportunity to ''strike 
a blow for literary freedom," and in some sections it 
proceeded to do so. "It is fortunate,'' said the Roch- 
ester Chronicle, "that the dates for the two gentle- 
men have been cancelled. Certainly the reputation of 
neither has been enhanced and the literary work which 
they have attempted to do in their travels, writing at 
hotels or on the cars, has been of a character decidedly 
inferior." 

"It has never seemed to us becoming or advanta- 
geous," said the Pittsburgh Dispatch, "for authors of 
genuine ability to fritter away their time and strength 
upon the lecture stage. With a man of genius like 
Riley it is not necessary that he should make a circus 
of himself. He is known everywhere now; his work 
is universally admired, and there is a keen demand 
for more of his delicious lyrics. They are not forth- 
coming. Perhaps he will abandon the circus business 
and resume the pursuit of the Muse. Then every- 
body, the Muse included, will be happy." 

In the face of these strong protests it is all the 
more surprising that a tour of thirty weeks was 
planned for 1889 and 1890, opening in Stamford, Con- 
necticut, in October. As in the two previous seasons 
there was an abounding public interest in the "literary 
team." If the performance was better one place than 
another, possibly the favored cities were Detroit and 
Pittsburgh. In those centers the newspapers as well 
as the crowds fairly boiled over with enthusiasm, even 
the Pittsburgh Dispatch that a short while before had 
deplored the frittering away of time and strength on 
the lecture stage. "The screaming farce," said the 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 253 

Dispatch, ''was when everybody had left the hall and 
the janitor swooped around and gathered up a quart 
of buttons. Fun and merriment reigned in various 
stages the whole evening, principally the superlative 
stage. The faces of the audience in the different con- 
tortions that the excessive mirth produced, were a 
side-splitting study in themselves. The hall was taxed 
to the utmost to accommodate the laughingly shaking 
mass of humanity. Round after round and peal after 
peal of applause and laughter, greeted the humorists 
at every move, word and look." 

There were changes here and there in the program 
but no marked difference from that of the previous 
season. Nye made a hit in "a literary gem," an 
original commencement day poem, written by Riley, 
entitled "The Autumn Leaves Is Falling" — 

"Lo! the autumn leaves is falling, 
Falling here and there — ■ 
Falling in the atmosphere 
And likewise in the air." 

To see Nye reading from a roll of manuscript orna- 
mented with a blue ribbon, his trembling hands sus- 
tained and comforted by a pair of white cotton gloves 
bought expressly for the occasion, was "an offering," 
as he said, "that caused the audience to toss pansies, 
violets, potatoes, turnips and other tropical shrubs at 
the author." He would read one stanza and retire be- 
hind the curtain. After an uproar of laughter he 
would come forward with a second stanza and so on, 
sometimes answering four encores in that way. The 
audience could not get enough of "Autumn Leaves." 

Riley touched his hearers deeply with the pathetic 



254 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

story of an old shoemaker, ''How Dutch Frank Found 
His Voice." Sentimental feelings were awakened by 
his recital of "Her Beautiful Hands/' and fond recol- 
lections by his new poem, "The Old Band." 

If there is any validity in the ancient belief that 
the disasters that befall men are occasioned by their 
towering prosperity and the frown of the gods upon 
it surely Nemesis was working industriously on the 
combination in January, 1890. Up to that time, 
praise from the public had been unstinted and con- 
tinuous. Nye's bank account, according to Major 
Pond, had been swelling to the tune of one thousand 
dollars a week. Riley, as will be seen, had been less 
fortunate. The first week in January Nye suffered 
from la grippe and Riley from nervous prostration. 
When one was unable to face the footlights the other 
went through the program alone. Each day through 
the month Riley grew more apprehensive, more un- 
happy. Again the newspapers bemoaned his absence 
in the field of letters. 

Looking back over the road Riley saw two new 
books, Pipes 0' Pan at Zekesbury, and the beautiful 
Old-Fashioned Roses, the latter compiled chiefly from 
his other volumes, for publication in England. This 
was not so bad, but he saw also that since he and Nye 
had traveled together there had been truly a dearth 
of new verse. There were only two poems which gave 
him pleasure when he woke in the night, "two little 
shining summits," he said, "The Poet of the Future" 
and "'Mongst the Hills o' Somerset." The latter, 
begun in the Anderson Hotel, Pittsburgh, and finished 
on the train, had been suggested by the casual remark 
of an editor praising the beauty of the hills and nooks 



THE UNIQUE COMBINATION 255 

of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, part of old Bedford 
County, where the poet's father and grandparents had 
lived before they came to Indiana. 

Two "shining" poems in two seasons on the lecture 
platform! It had not been thus in the poetic pros- 
perity of years gone by. Riley's heart sank within 
him, and as in other and previous periods of de- 
pression, he again became the victim of his dragon, 
his old-time foe, the blue flame. Friends wept, as 
Scotchmen wept for Burns, but, alas, the malady was 
not to be remedied by weeping. 

Another cause, an immediate one, contributed to the 
dissolution of the combination. In April, 1885, Riley 
had signed a five-year contract with the Western 
Lyceum Agency, vv^hereby its manager was to receive 
half the receipts. "With no more business sense than 
an oyster — a cove oyster," said Riley, "I signed the 
papers. In those days I believed implicitly in men. 
My faith and ignorance were such that had a man 
brought me my death warrant I would have signed it 
without reading, or had I read the thing I would not 
have comprehended it." 

In due time came the season of prosperity, and Riley 
received four hundred dollars a week, fifty per cent, 
of which went to the agency. After the combination 
had become a bonanza, the terms were modified and 
the contract transferred to Major Pond. Riley was 
to receive sixty dollars a night, one-third of which was 
to be paid to the Western Agency, although it con- 
tributed but little to the great success. In the large 
cities the receipts were considerably more than one 
thousand dollars a night. In Chicago, for instance, 
there were sixteen hundred dollars at the second per- 



256 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

formance within six weeks, **with five hundred people 
turned away from the door." Still Riley's share was 
the ''paltry forty dollars." As time passed, this in- 
justice became intolerable to him. He had not "the 
business sense of an oyster, but," as he said, "an 
oyster would know that that was not a square division 
of the profits." As a brilliant Indiana lawyer said, 
"The Western Agency sold the poet to Pond — sold 
James Whitcomb Riley into slavery. On the last tour, 
one of the most successful on the American stage, 
Riley received but a small fraction of the profits al- 
though he was giving half the show. We of Indiana 
tearfully regret the result, but it should not excite 
surprise that the poet, the victim of a malignant 
temptation, grew gloomy over the slavery and took to 
drink to drown his sorrow." 

(Afterward in the days of his platform prosperity, 
he did not drown his sorrow in that way. He resisted 
the temptation. Again and again, at banquets and 
receptions, — "deceptions," he called them, — he and his 
manager were the only guests who turned the wine 
cup down.) 

Determined to have "the pound of flesh," the man- 
ager of the Western Agency began to shadow the poet 
from city to city, a course that was as ill-advised as 
it was unforgivable. Once aware of this "Riley be- 
came," to quote Nye, "a wild, riotous, blazing, uncon- 
trollable Vesuvius. That instant the combination 
began coasting toward the crash." 

January, 1890, the partnership was dissolved, the 
tour that was to have embraced the cities of the plains, 
the Pacific coast and the British possessions coming 
abruptly to an end at Louisville, Kentucky. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 

WHEN Riley woke from the night of despair 
at Louisville, his first thought was that he 
"would be neglected like a fallen skyrocket. 
The wind, a bleak, vindictive wind," he said, *'had 
been blowing and sobbing till the icicles on the eaves 
looked dismal and weary. My faculties had been 
enchained. Furies, seen and unseen, seemed to be 
unwinding for me the skein of an awful destiny." 

To all appearances it was indeed a frozen, desolate 
world and to Riley it seemed that he was the most 
unloved object in it. But within a week it was evi- 
dent that his genius could not be obscured by his 
weakness. A man could make a mistake and still be 
a man. "The world," wrote Eugene Field, "will 
not suffer the beauty of Riley's work and the sym- 
metry of his literary reputation to be ruthlessly shat- 
tered by the iconoclasm of his personal weakness." 

A paraphrase of an old English greeting (the 
language of Pope) expresses the attitude of his 
Hoosier friends and neighbors toward the poet in that 
hour of his extremity: Welcome to your native soil! 
welcome to your friends, whether returned with honor 
and filled with agreeable hopes; or melancholy with 
dejection. If happy, we partake of your elevation ; if 
unhappy, you still have a warm corner in our hearts. 

257 



258 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Whatever you are and in whatever state you are we 
are with you. 

''Between the cradle and the grave," remarked 
Eugene V. Debs to a circle of critics, ''are dark blots 
resting on the cliffs of time, which we would sweep 
away if we could. But the blots are there. Let us 
be merciful that we may obtain mercy.*' 

Before leaving Louisville Nye bade Riley an affec- 
tionate good-by. Certain reports, falsely attributed 
to him, but really emanating from the Western Lyceum 
Agency, had been going the rounds of the press. They 
were grossly exaggerated and painfully damaging. A 
few days after reaching New York, Nye was heard to 
say that he "would give the wealth of Indiana could 
the press recall them." 

At first Riley was strongly disinclined to make any 
comment, but finally on his return to Indianapolis he 
said: "I have seen only the first reports and they 
shocked me so terribly that I have not had the cour- 
age to review any more of them. Soon the public will 
see the spirit of malice and anger and revenge which 
pervades them. They are their own condemnation. 

"I am especially blest in the number of my warm 
friends. They need no explanation of these reports. 
One of the truest of them is Bill Nye. His fealty to 
me is beyond all question. We parted friends, as we 
have always been and always will be. He understands 
and I understand. We are wholly congenial, and a 
better, gentler man I never knew. 

"I desire to stand before the public only as I am. 
My weaknesses are known, and I am willing for the 
world to judge whether in my life or writings there 
has been anything dishonorable. I do not say that in 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 259 

this blight which has fallen on me, I am innocent of 
blame. I have been to some degree derelict and cul- 
pable. The whole affair is to be regretted and for the 
present I have to accept the responsibility. 

*'I have always been a firm believer in the doctrine 
that ruin, where undeserved, can be but temporary, 
and now I have an opportunity to see my belief tested. 
I do not desire to say anything harsh of anybody, and 
for the present, at least, am content to wait for better 
things. I am sustained by the renewed expressions 
of affection from my friends." 

It seems fitting, now that the partnership has been 
dissolved, that Riley should have a further word about 
Nye. Always Nye was Joe and Riley was Pip of 
Great Expectations. ("Ever the best of friends; ain't 
us, Pip?") *'The gentlest and cheeriest of men," 
said Riley. "Nye has the heart of a woman and 
the tenderness of a child. Always in good humor, 
never finicky, I could not imagine a more charm- 
ing traveling companion. We were constantly play- 
ing practical jokes on each other or indulging in 
some mischievous banter before the audience. On one 
occasion, coming before the footlights for a word of 
general introduction, Mr. Nye said, 'Ladies and gen- 
tlemen, the entertainment to-night is of a dual nature. 
Mr. Riley and I will speak alternately. First I come 
out and talk until I get tired, then Mr. Riley comes out 
and talks until you get tired!' Thus the sallies and 
kickshaws bubbled merrily on, every night something 
new to spring on the audience. Besides I learned to 
know in Bill Nye a man blessed with as noble and 
heroic a heart as ever beat. But the making of trains, 
which were all in conspiracy to outwit me, schedule or 



260 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

310 schedule, and the rush and tyrannical pressure of 
inviolable engagements, some hundred to a season and 
from Boston to the Rocky Mountains, were a distress 
to my soul. Imagine yourself on a crowded day-long 
excursion; imagine that you had to ride all the way 
on the platform of the car ; then imagine that you had 
to ride all the way back on the same platform; and 
lastly, try to imagine how you would feel if you did 
that every day of your lif e^ — and you will then get a 
glimmer — a faint glimmer — of how one feels after 
traveling about on a reading or lecturing tour." 

After Riley's public statement, expressions of 
tenderness and faith were heard on every side. Let- 
ters and telegrams came from remote quarters of the 
country. The local spirit of good will crystallized in 
a reception to him given by the Indianapolis Literary 
Club, an association of gentlemen that included lead- 
ing jurists, clergymen, lawyers, physicians and 
v/riters. It was the sentiment of the Club that Riley 
had shed luster on Indiana and would continue to do 
so. 

Ladies and gentlemen both were present with guests 
from other cities of the state. The reception was in- 
tended to be a local one, but what happened crept on 
to the wires. It was good news and papers through- 
out the country printed it. "Whitcomb Riley," said 
the Chicago Mail, "remains king on his native heath, 
despite recent derogatory reports. The Indianapolis 
Literary Club has arranged to give him a reception, 
just by way of showing that Indiana takes no stock in 
the stories. In this age a poet is not without honor in 
his own corner of the world." "The people of Indi- 
anapolis," said the Kansas City Star, "have set an 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 261 

example worthy of imitation. The Hoosier Poet re- 
turned to them a few days ago, and they received him 
gladly and resolved to stand by him. This is a lesson 
of fair treatment which should not go unheeded. It 
says to other communities, Go and do likewise." 

Only those who have passed through a personal 
crisis, an overwhelming shadow, can know what 
Riley's feelings were when he faced his friends in 
the Indianapolis Literary Club. Ten years he had 
been associated with them. It seemed to him, he said 
after the reception, that the betrayal of his weakness 
had only strengthened their affection. "Ladies and 
gentlemen," he began, "I can not find words to express 
my gratitude for this display of your confidence. I 
hope I shall not abuse it in the future as I have to 
some extent in the past. I shall hope the better to 
deserve it. I really can not thank you. I am bereft 
of language when I attempt it." 

The Club did what it could to relieve the poet of 
grim recollections. His staunch lawyer friend, Wil- 
liam P. Fishback, in a spicy speech claimed for law- 
yers kinship with the poets. Neither profession, he 
said, tolerated humbuggery and charlatanism. With 
sparkling wit he continued the comparison. Lastly 
he assured Riley of the Club's unbroken fealty. He 
was especially proud of the fact that Indiana knew 
Riley was a poet "long before Lowell, or Howells, or 
other pinnacles of intelligence in the East knew it." 

Judge Livingstone Howland was most happy at the 
close of his remarks in his paraphrase of the line from 
Gray's "Elegy." He was on the program for an 
obiter dictum, "You may not know what that means," 
said the Judge. "Among lawyers it stands for some- 



262 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

thing that is good for nothing as authority and entitled 
to no respect whatever. Therefore I do not feel any- 
deep sense of responsibility for what I may say here 
to-night. Mr. Fishback has in his own bright way, 
placed poets and lawyers in conjunction, and sought 
to show how much good they have in common. He 
seems to have had a purpose in taking advantage of 
the present flood of popular feeling toward a poet 
(whom it is unnecessary to name) to lift our honor- 
able profession above the level at which it has lately 
stood in the public estimation. 

"Now I fear," continued the Judge, "that in the 
mind of the masses — ^the common run of people — the 
marked, distinguishing characteristic of our pro- 
fession is a total disregard for truth ; they, the multi- 
tude, think a lawyer will say whatever he is paid to 
say, will take it all back the next day, if better paid to 
do so, and cares nothing for the eternal verities. In 
plain, blunt speech, we are, to the common mind, pro- 
fessional liars. You have seen how my friend Fish- 
back, one of the brightest and liveliest of the brother- 
hood, has been touched by the poet's wand, has been 
softened, opened, expanded, illuminated and trans- 
formed — his fine face glowing with feeling, his soul in 
ecstasy. To my mind no finer tribute has been paid 
Mr. Riley to-night than this single fact — ^this practical 
demonstration of his power. It sustains his title to 
poetic genius, his ability to exercise the highest func- 
tion of true poesy — to wake to ecstasy the living liarJ* 

At the close of the reception Riley had been so re- 
established in his own mind and so encouraged that 
he was persuaded to recite two selections — one, 
"Tradin' Joe,*' among the very earliest of his produc- 




Courte<y The Indianapolis Literary Club 

William P. Fishback, "who with gkeatest zest shared with the 

neediest" 
From a portrait by T. C. Steele 



, /(.^ j,^ 4f- ^^<^ k^^..:j«a<^^ 





^nK 



Fkom Original Manuscript With Illustration. The Poem Written 
ON THE Assassination of President Garfield 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 263 

tions; the other, his latest poem, "The Little Man in 
the Tin Shop.'^ 

Thus did the Hoosiers rally round their favorite 
son. Other cities did likewise. "How quickly,'' re- 
marked a friend, "can a smile of God change the 
world." Soon Riley was the guest of the Blue Grass 
Club in Louisville, and the Glenarm Club in Denver. 
It was his first visit to the Far West. The reception 
was on an elaborate scale, arranged by Myron Reed. 
"The poet," said the preacher, "was the guest of the 
Rocky Mountains." 

The evidence of affection in the messages Riley re- 
ceived would make a book. Especially loyal was his 
old comrade of the Hawkeye — "Always, always and 
always your friend, Robert J. Burdette." "Why 
should you promise a crowd of people that you will try 
*to deserve their respect'?" he wrote, "You have not 
lost it. You have the profoundest respect of your 
friends. It has never wavered or faltered. And you 
are not going to lose it." 

Riley had little to answer, except to suggest that 
there is at bottom a spirit of good in lost battles. An 
early fragment gave a glimpse of his feelings: 



"The burdened heart is lighter 

When the fault has been confessed, 
And the day of life is brighter 
When the good is manifest. 

"So all the shadows looming 

In the dusk shall fade away. 
And sweetest flowers be blooming 
In the furrows of decay." 



264 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Riley began bravely, hoping that he might in some 
extraordinary way answer all communications, but 
the task soon proved to be a hopeless one. A few 
letters reveal his gratitude as expressed in a hundred 
or more. "As to the recent disaster/' he wrote Ed- 
ward S. Van Zile of the New York World, "were I as 
pitiless as my assailant, I could far better defend my- 
self than I have. As it is, I have never uttered his 
name, nor suffered it to be extorted by any skill or 
cunning of reporters — believing no wrong can so 
secretly hide itself away as not to be in happy time 
unearthed and its pelt nailed on the gable end of the 
barn, as our own dear Nye would doubtless put it. 
Give him my best love if you see him." 

Riley was especially gracious in a letter to a 
stranger in Nebraska, one of the thousand unknown 
friends similarly tortured, who had "prayed God to 
be kind to the poet." 

The New Denison, 
Indianapolis, March 4, 1890. 
Dear Sir and friend: 

You have written a letter that does me good clean 
through. I am very proud of it, and shall treasure it 
among my rarest prizes and most goodly gifts. When 
you wrote that, I doubt not God was in your pleasant 
neighborhood. All you say was said of the best right, 
because righteously inspired. A sincere voice is never 
— can not be discordant. I thank you beyond words 
for the gracious utterance of every syllable. 
Always and enduringly yours, 

James Whitcomb Riley. 

Indianapolis, February 9, 1890. 
Dear Dan Paine: 

Your letter was so jolly! I would rather have you 
at my funeral than my own folks, and hope you will 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 265 

manage to be there. As to my present trouble, you 
have ''sized'* the situation exactly — as I knew you 
would. Some acquire "nagging" — Some have "nag- 
ging'' thrust upon them. Till now I have been of the 
latter class, and in that line could almost "point to 
myself with pride.*' Next time, however, they will 
have to "down" me by some other process; and, amid 
the general wreck, it is pleasant, at least, to think the 
press of the United States and Canada have, along 
with other gratuitous information, been made ac- 
quainted with my fixed intent — ^the best one of my 
life. 

Some very neighborly and wholesome reveries drop 
in on me now and then, and close the door softly after 
them, and sit down as of old, and gossip pleasantly 
in restful, once-in-a-while voices. The embers bloom, 
the clock ticks, and the kettle simmers, and a most 
gracious peace is mine once more. That is a pretty 
good condition, is it not, for a fellow, dear old man, 
compared with the eternal racket and worry and 
hurry of the world, — unvisited by any hint of rest — 
where one gropes through the cinders to his nightly 
berth, and tosses through the sullen watches, yawning 
and sighing like a leaky bellows, as he thinks of being 
hustled out again at dawn and thrusting his cold, re- 
lentless legs through a pair of trousers cold as candle 
moulds. 

Soon as I am out again I am coming up to see you, 
and, in return, to chirk you up a little. To show you, 
by comparison, that being shut in all the time, as you 
have been, is even better fare than mine in the "free 
air," "the wild, rapturous rush of the chase," and the 
ever-beckoning bobtail of the nimble nickel as he 
"vanishes away" in the dim dark distance. 

As ever your affectionate and grateful friend, 

J. W. Riley. 

"If Riley's verse," said a Canadian journal, "is evi- 
dence of his mental condition under the influence of 



26e JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

liquor, it would be well if all our magazine versifiers 
would discover his brand and use the same." The 
suggestion recalls Lincoln's remark about General 
Grant, but Riley no m.ore wrote his poems while drink- 
ing than did Grant move his army to Richmond in a 
state of intoxication. In periods of thanksgiving 
after he had escaped from the clutches of his enemy, 
Riley wrote exquisite verse. His genius reached the 
pinnacle of achievement in a two-year total absti- 
nence period. 

In certain quarters it was held that there was "too 
much digging away at the Hoosier Poet's private char- 
acter"; his poetry belonged to the people; his virtues 
and vices w^ere his own. Madison Cawein, in after- 
years a guest of the poet at his home in Lockerbie 
Street, held persistently to this opinion. A resident 
of Louisville, he was familiar with what had happened 
there. *'Riley," he said on one occasion, "you should 
write your own biography. A man's infirmities are 
his own affair, and it is his right to deny them pub- 
licity." 

"He that covereth his sins shall not prosper," re- 
turned Riley. "As to a biography, I have neither the 
time nor the inclination." This led to talk about 
biography, Cawein holding to the exclusion of such 
blemishes as the Louisville incident. "Not at all," 
said Riley. "It was an unpleasant, regrettable thing, 
I know, but it happened, happened conspicuously. It 
was another turning point in my history." 

Cawein had touched a vital point, and Riley soon 
became so earnest and interesting that he was per- 
mitted to do all the talking. This substantially is 
what he said: "I read a sketch of an author in a 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 267 

magazine the other day. 'His character is without 
blemish from his earliest years/ it said. Why write 
like that about any man? It is false; the reader 
knows it is false, and the writer knew it when he 
wrote it. It is the old New England way of making 
authors perfect. Nobody believes it. I prefer the 
biography of Mark Twain. Biography should have 
shadows in it, like those in the Bible. There is King 
David, breaker of the eighth and tenth Command- 
ments, wronging himself and others to satisfy his 
carnal nature. He was a chief among sinners. Do 
you know, my friend, that you southerners would burn 
men at the stake for sins David committed? And yet 
this same King David was a poet, the best one in the 
Bible. 

"When I was a young man," continued Riley, "the 
old philosopher, Bronson Alcott came to Indiana with 
his conversations. A crowd of fifty or a hundred men 
and women collected about him. He sat in a chair and 
answered questions — had much to say about the dual 
nature of man. Man had two natures; one he called 
the Deuce, the other, the Angel. We had here at the 
time, the chaplain of a little flock somewhere on the 
edge of town, a 'sanctified' man. How do I know? 
He said he was. I see him now in his come-to-Jesus 
coat, striding self-righteously along the street. He 
was as dead to the moral needs of our community as 
the flag-pole on the Journal Works. Well, he was 
among those present and rose to confuse the philos- 
opher, as he thought. 

" *Who is this Deuce you talk so much about T he 
asked. 

"*You, yourself, sir/ returned Alcott, *are the an- 



268 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

swer to your query. You amaze me that you have lived 
so long with him and have not known him/ 

"The Deuce," concluded Riley, "was in King David 
as he is in Tom, Dick, and Harry and the Hoosier 
Poet. The Deuce works iniquity. But David had also 
the Angel in him. That made him a poet. The Angel 
wrote the Psalms. The Angel made him the man after 
God's own heart. A biography, to be worth reading, 
must be an authentic experience, tell of things in the 
Bible way, tell of the Deuce as well as the Angel, that 
the one may be hated and avoided, and the other loved 
and emulated. You shall not say of your subject that 
his character is without blemish. Mark Twain once 
told me that he was always haunted by a little bad man, 
and that sometimes the little devil got the upper hand 
of good intentions. Twain said that his life was like 
Australia — ^picturesque, full of surprises and adven- 
tures and incongruities and contradictions and in- 
credibilities. There were the facts, Twain added; 
they could not be dodged ; they all happened." 

"Every hour of every day," Riley said once to a re- 
porter, "I stand up in front of myself and say it shall 
not be this way; and it is this way. You might as 
well try to stop a cyclone, turn an iceberg from its 
midnight path through the sea." 

As in the gloom of the Poe-Poem forgery, so after 
the painful reports from Louisville many said, "This 
is the end of the Hoosier Poet's fame." But again 
such prophecies were false. Within two weeks he de- 
clined an offer of two hundred dollars a night. "The 
poet and I will travel in my private car," said the 
theatrical manager who made the offer: "I will make 
him one of the greatest attractions on the road." 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 269 

The offer was declined. Friends protested strongly 
against a possible repetition of the lecture disasters. 
"At heart," wrote Frank G. Carpenter, "Riley is what 
his poems show him to be — a great big boy with a soul 
in sympathy with the good, the true and the beautiful. 
He bestows mercy on the sinful, and has a kindly feel- 
ing toward all that is sad and sorrowful in humanity. 
It goes without saying that such a man should not 
sell his soul for one-half its profits to an advertising 
agent." 

Never agmn will I devote my time the year round to 
the lecture platform — such was the poet's resolution. 
Many temptations came to break it, but he kept his 
word. Three men signally strengthened the resolu- 
tion. "For your art's sake," wrote Meredith Nichol- 
son, "I hope you are out of the platform business for 
good. You will now do what I have presumed to 
preach to you for a long time, the making of serious 
verse." 

"Count on me to the death," wrote Hamlin Gar- 
land. "I was afraid you were doing too much. You are 
worn out. Take a good rest and go back to writing. 
What's the use, if you have money enough to live on? 
We want Whitcomb Riley's poems. We don't like 
this knocking about the country wearing himself out. 
We always talked plainly to each other, did we not? 
So I say I would rather see you a poor poet in a gar- 
ret than a lecturer in the hands of a money-grabber. 
It's an ill wind that drives no soul to port." 

Later Rudyard Kipling wrote from Battleboro, Ver- 
mont: "It is good to hear about your fleecing the 
Egyptians, but remember that reading, though it does 
not feel that way at first by reason of the excitement, 



270 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

has the knack of breaking a man up into little pieces, 
and it is possible to buy money too dearly. Therefore, 
appoint a time and limit, or the dear public out of its 
very kindness will merely kill you and then wonder 
why in the world you died. I have seen so many men 
go that way that I am a bit scared and the more be- 
cause they tell me your readings are great, which 
means that you put a lot of yourself into them. You 
will not find me on the warpath yet awhile. I would 
go far to listen to you — and some day we will meet." 

Ever after, the poet appointed "a time and limit'* 
to lecturing. He and Nye had an agreement with their 
manager that they were to have one day a week for 
writing, but the booking had been so close that Sunday 
was the only open day, which to some minds, accounted 
for the inferiority of their product, a few boldly affirm- 
ing that it was inferior because written on Sunday. 
Painfully conscious of his failure, it was no surprise 
to his nearest friends, that Riley desired to give both 
the public and himself a rest; "and if mine should be 
long, deep and profound," he wrote Benjamin Parker, 
"I could with a quavering sigh of relief, slacken the 
belt of my shroud and pile down like the print of a 
small boy in the snow." 

Scarcely had he '^paused to take breath," as he 
phrased it, when the demand for his "writings in- 
creased to an extent that was astounding and bewilder- 
ingly unaccountable." And then the Muse "dropped 
in" to see him. "Here it had been raining for days 
and days and likewise some other days and days," he 
wrote a distant friend; "kind of a serial rain, the 
author of which seems to be trying to produce some- 



THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS 271 

thing longer and more tedious than Middlemarch, 
And so last night I began as I thought to succumb to 
its dread influence, and sat down to write a melan- 
choly poem — with what result? Why bless you, that 
little poem (*The Little-Red Apple Tree') just laid 
back and laughed and laughed like somebody was 
ticklin' its feet! And I was so jollied up by it that I 
laughed with it, and the pair of us (the poem and I) 
well-nigh raised the neighbors." 

By July (1890) the demand had become so great 
that he was "driven to the verge of brain-softening by 
publishers, editors, interviewers, side managers and 
alluring orders." Innumerable orders, but how was 
he to fill them ? "I would like to write such a poem as 
you outline," he wrote an editor, "could I see a clear 
way to its completion. Like engagements — old, old, 
centuries old — are slowly making me honest enough 
with latter patrons to tell them frankly that my sound- 
est promises won't hold shucks. I mean well but seem 
helplessly perverse in the righteous fulfillment of all 
orders. By this you are most justly to infer that my 
poetry, however poor, is better than my word. The 
verse must go therefore as I turn it loose — first come, 
first served, with great liberal landscapes of allow- 
ances." 

In such manner Riley turned loose "June at Wood- 
ruff," "Bereaved," and "Kissing the Rod," but the 
poems were not fresh from the mint. The latter was 
ten years old — so long had it to wait for approval. 
" 'Bereaved'," he wrote Newton Matthews, "will make 
you weep out loud." In lines to Riley, Matthews 
celebrated his friend's verse in true, lyric fashion: 



272 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"Few singers since the world began, 

My comrade, e'er blew such a tone 
Of joyance from the Pipes of Pan, 

As your warm lips have lately blown; 

No grief unknown, no old-world moan. 
Finds voice in you ; your songs are new 
As April lilacs dashed with dew; 
Your themes are common, but your thought 
Gleams like a frightened firefly caught 

In tangles of a trellised vine, 
Or like a flashing jewel brought 

To light from some deserted mine." 



CHAPTER XV 

THE POET AT FORTY 

A MAN of extreme moods and opinions was the 
Hoosier Poet, ranging as he wrote from the 
height of every rapture down to the sobs of ev- 
ery lost delight, — not always, but often enough to be 
supremely interesting and sometimes distinctly dis- 
agreeable — swearing by one thing one week and repu- 
diating it the next: — at the summit of his glee, a de- 
lectable creature for whom his friends could find no 
parallel this side of boyhood ; and again, so glum and 
funereal that a hermit crab would be preferable com- 
pany. 

Life was March weather, blustering and sunny in 
a day. At times he believed in the tyranny of cir- 
cumstances, the **iron links of Destiny." Free agency 
was an empty name. Again, when more heavenly 
sentiments sparkled in his reflections, he believed in 
the power of good to resist all malevolent forces — in 
a word, the poet was his own commander-in-chief. 

His friend William Dean Howells once intimated 
that a young man is a dancing balloon, a bundle of ex- 
periments and irregularities; in short, he is a fool 
till he is forty. "A fool after forty," was Riley's 
quick response. "Did you ever know a wise man who 
was not a fool?" The barrier between wisdom and 
folly is about as thin as that between civilization and 
barbarism. 

273 



274 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Riley was of Montaigne's opinion, that there is no 
man who has not deserved hanging five or six times. 

When Riley was thirty-three, John Hay told him that 
man reaches his zenith at forty. At the same time 
Hay admonished the poet, if he had any great under- 
taking ahead, to begin it before passing that milestone. 
Things begun after forty were less likely to be 
achieved. 

In verse production Riley was passing his zenith at 
the moment Hay was talking with him, although both 
were oblivious of the fact. When Afterwhiles ap- 
peared, critics, who knew nothing of Riley's "Prolific 
Decade," said: *TIe is just in his prime and more and 
better work may be expected from him." In fact he 
was nearing the end of his prime. 

At forty he had done his greatest work. Nor is 
this to his discredit as some older poets have thought. 
Youth was the mainspring of all his poetic production. 
"Youth makes history," he heard George William Cur- 
tis once remark. "Wherever there is genuine, vic- 
torious work in the poetic line to be done. Destiny 
sends young poets with faith in their hearts and fire 
in their veins to do it — not old ones with feathers in 
their hats." 

After his fortieth year, reluctant as friends were to 
admit it, the moments were rare when Riley rose to 
the top of his power. The flow of youth in him was 
diminished. There were no "great paroxysms of in- 
spiration" as there had been, and friends remarked 
as they did of Wordsworth that he wrote beyond his 
days of inspiration. A few years later critics grew 
more severe and attributed the lack of tuneful meas- 
ures to an overproduction of obituary verse. "Not in 



THE POET AT FORTY 275 

necrology," Myron Reed wrote the poet, "not there, 
not there, my child. Your harp is tuned to 'When The 
Hearse Comes Back.' '' 

Late in the 'nineties Bliss Carman remarked that 
"Riley is about the only man in America who is writ- 
ing any poetry." Carman did not know — and his not 
knowing did not in the least lessen the value of his 
opinion — he did not know that the poetry he praised 
had been written in the 'eighties, back in the high tide 
of Riley's genius. When Riley was forty he was ad- 
vised to make a bonfire of accumulated manuscripts, 
letters and papers. "The smoke from it," said a friend, 
"would fill the air with genii and overcast the face 
of the heavens." Had Riley acted on the advice, valu- 
able poems would have been lost to posterity — ^hun- 
dreds of fragments, which grew into poems in the 
'nineties, would have been destroyed. He preferred to 
save everj^hing and let Time be the destroyer. 

His fortieth year marked distinctly another turning- 
point in Riley's life. For then in response to the suc- 
cessful activities of his publishers he began to take a 
lively interest in his books. A year or so before, he 
had been skeptical about any substantial financial re- 
ward from book publication. "There seems to be so 
much of the lottery principle in it," he wrote a young 
poet. "What I confidently think will take well with 
the public does not take, and what I fear will not go, 
goes. And so it is, as I learn from all available ex- 
periences of literary friends. At best the monetary 
success is unworthy recompense for all the trials and 
anxieties one must endure. For fifteen years I have 
been striving to attain an audience for my verse, and 
long ago would have given up in sheer despair but 



276 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

that I had a more practical calling [income from the 
Journal and the platform] by which I could put bread 
in my mouth, and also pie. The majority of mankind 
is more in sympathy with dimes than rhymes. A poet 
must, therefore, equip himself, someway, with means, 
that's all! Longfellow did it by teaching; Bryant by 
newspaper work ; Stoddard, the same ; and so on with 
the whole-kit-and-bilin' of the twittering brotherhood 
that 'get there' as well as versify. Singing alone will 
not pay except in the rarest instances.'* 

The dissolution of the partnership with Nye marked 
the end of confusion in business affairs, due to the 
prudent direction of his brother-in-law, Henry Eitel, 
who henceforth had control of the poet's financial in- 
vestments. "Had my brother-in-law been present five 
years before," said Riley in 1890, "I would not have 
signed my death-warrant. There was no business in- 
firmity, no two-penny nonsense after he took charge. 
A poet in business transactions is as defenseless as 
a duckling. I knew a poet who once made sixty dollars 
and then (being naturally and wholly impractical) 
dropped every nickel of it in Wall Street. My broth- 
in-law discouraged such ventures." 

The year 1890 marked the beginning of financial 
prosperity for the poet, and in the minds of some, the 
end of genius. Thomas Bailey Aldrich contended that 
to the Goddess, poverty is the most, alluring condition ; 
that she delights in the wretchedness of mean attics; 
that when prosperity comes she bids the bard farewell : 

"Of old when I walked on a rugged way, 

And gave much work for but little bread, 
The Goddess dwelt with me night and day, 
Sat at my table, haunted my bed. 



THE POET AT FORTY 277 

"Wretched enough was I sometimes, 

Pinched and harassed with vain desires; 
But thicker than clover sprung the rhymes 
As I dwelt like a sparrow among the spires. 

"For a man should live in a garret aloof, 
And have few friends, and go poorly clad, 
With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, 
To keep the Goddess constant and glad." 

Deny John Howard Payne pleasures and palaces, 
and lodge him in a debtor's prison, and he writes 
"Home, Sweet Home,*' possibly the best loved song in 
the English language. 

The Goddess did sit with Riley at his table and haunt 
his bed in his days of deprivation, when he wrote in 
"The Dead Rose," "The Crow's Nest" and "The 
Morgue." In his own words, he was almost afraid to 
move out of his tracks sometimes for fear of stepping 
on another poem. "If I am idle a day," he wrote a 
friend, "unfinished poems sob over my neglect. They 
scamper like noisy children about my empty brain. I 
hear one calling now. It will be absolutely jealous I 
believe should I not succeed in materializing its per- 
turbed spirit by two o'clock to-night. At this high 
pressure I may have to rise and explain things as once 
did— 

"A shrewd non-explosive-oil man 
While testing for friends of his clan, 

Who explained from aloof 

Through a hole in the roof, 
That he'd stuck the match in the wrong can." 

In the 'nineties Riley wrote perhaps a score of popu- 
lar poems, such as "The Enduring," "The Sermon of 



278 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the Rose," and ''The Name of Old Glory," but in none 
of them did his poetic genius reach the heights of 
earlier days. 

He was not inclined to talk about the waning of his 
powers, and when he did, it was to joke. "Back there," 
he would say, recalling his prime, ''I heard voices. 
Bless you, man ! I have seen times when stark and im- 
movable I could block traffic in Washington Street, — 
dazed to the core over a whippoorwill calling across the 
darkness and the dew, or something. I never under- 
stood it, don't suppose I ever will. A kind of catch- 
your-breath feeling, you know, 

"Kind o' like that sweet-sick feelin*, in the long sweep 
of a swing. 
The first you ever swung in, with yer sweetheart, i 

jing!— - 
Yer first picnic — ^yer first ice-cream — yer first o' 
everything 
'At happened 'fore yer dancin-days wuz over!" 

There was some measure of truth, too, in the state- 
ment made at this time that Riley was yielding to 
the more conservative, dignified forms of verse con- 
struction. In his latter days he did fail to maintain 
*'the independence of imagination." "James Whit- 
comb Riley is a genuine genius," wrote Maurice 
Thompson ; "he sings in his own way his own tender, 
amusing, pathetic songs outright from the fountains 
of nature. The moment that he shall feel the extrinsic 
pressure of an artificial atmosphere and turn to books 
and rules for models and guidance, the particular, 
definitive quality, which sets him apart from the choir 
of smooth and pretty singers by note, will depart from 
his verse forever." 



THE POET AT FORTY 279 

It was the artificial atmosphere of his prosperous 
days that drew from old-time friends the protestation 
that ''the modern Riley is a myth." They thought his 
love of children a fiction. According to them the child 
the poet loved was a memory, the child of the Long 
Ago, the child in the abstract. The poet's love of Nature 
was explained in the same way. He did not stand en- 
tranced knee-deep in clover fields as he was supposed 
to do. That too was a memory of his youth, a retro- 
spect. 

Whether the modern Riley was a myth does not par- 
ticularly concern these pages. That he wrote inspir- 
ingly of childhood and nature, no sympathetic reader 
of his poems will deny. His books are on the shelves 
— they speak for him. Somewhere in his career he did 
passionately love Nature and children. Sweet waters 
do not flow from a bitter fountain. 

As to the Riley quality in his latter-day productions, 
friends marked its absence in such occasional poems 
as the "Ode to Thomas A. Hendricks," written "to 
order" the summer of 1890, for the unveiling of the 
vice-president's statue in Indianapolis. According to 
the Atlanta Constitution it was "merely sound and 
fury signifying nothing." Riley's own criticism of 
it was not so harsh, but late in life he admitted its fail- 
ure as he did of other poems in its class. "The trou- 
ble with poems for occasions," he once observed, "is 
their lack of heart and human nature. There is not 
sufficient inspiration in the desire of a memorial com- 
mittee. When I write a poem of that kind I become a 
piece of intellectual machinery — a grinder at the mill ; 
my heart is not in my work." 

Myron Reed always insisted that the great years in 



280 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Riley's development belonged to the 'seventies and the 
'eighties. "The poet was true to his polarity. His 
magnetic needle pointed in one direction. He did not 
always do his best, but he did things that were excel- 
lent and commanding, and they were so because he 
wrote his poems in his way, the new way." 

While we may deplore the absence of the Riley 
quality in verse he wrote in the 'nineties, we can not 
but be grateful for his devotion to the task of book- 
making, his editing — ^revamping he called it — poems 
to that end, although his revision did sometimes dam- 
age the original freshness and beauty. "I am' going to 
print books steadily till dissolution sets in on Yours 
till Then," he wrote a friend after publishing After- 
whiles, During the summer of 1890 he prepared the 
manuscript for Rhymes of Childhood. "Getting it to- 
gether," he remarked, "has been great fun, and I am 
one of the happiest boys in it." The book marked an 
epoch in juvenile literature. For a long while its 
author had 

"Held that the true age of wisdom is when 
We are boys and girls, and not women and men ; 
When as credulous children we know things because 
We believe them — however averse to the laws." 

In prose the child — the boy in particular — ^had been 
emancipated from the sugary atmosphere of the front 
parlor in such books as Warner's Being a Boy, Aid- 
rich's Story of a Bad Boy, and Mark Twain's Tom 
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Those books had done 
signal service to the race in choking off the consumt)- 
tive child-saints modeled after the so-called heroes in 
the old English Sunday-school books. What Twain, 



THE POET AT FORTY 281 

Aldrich and Warner had done in prose, the Rhymes of 
Childhood did in verse. 

The book's claim to fame lay in the absence of lit- 
erary affectation. Children were presented without 
gloss or distortion. "They were real Simon-pure 
children," said Riley, "who would make real men and 
women." Their actions were perfectly natural and 
hence, as Reynolds the painter had said, were graceful. 

It is not Riley's province, he said in his Prefatory 
note to the volume, to offer any excuse for deportment 
of children. Their very defects of speech and gesture 
were at times engaging. No need to "worry for their 
futures, since the All-Kind Mother has them in her 
keep." 

In his paper, "Dialect in Literature," read before the 
Indianapolis Literary Club, October, 1890, Riley de- 
fended the child at greater length. "Since for ages," 
he said, "this question seems to have been left un- 
asked, it may be timely now to propound it — ^Why not 
the real child in Literature? The real child is good 
enough (we all know he is bad enough) to command 
our admiring attention and most lively interest in real 
life, and just as we find him 'in the raw.' Then why 
do we deny him any righteous place of recognition in 
our Literature? From the immemorial advent of our 
dear old Mother Goose, Literature has been especially 
catering to the juvenile needs and desires, and yet 
steadfastly overlooking, all the time, the very princi- 
ples upon which Nature herself founds and presents 
this lawless little brood of hers — ^the children. It is 
not the children who are out of order ; it is Literature. 

"The elegantly minded purveyors of Child Literature 
can not possibly tolerate the presence of any but the 



282 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

refined children — the very proper children — ^the studi- 
ously thoughtful, poetic children; — and these must be 
kept safe from the contaminating touch of our rough- 
and-tumble little fellows in 'hodden gray/ with frow- 
zy heads, begrimed but laughing faces, and such awful 
awful vulgarities of naturalness, and crimes of sim- 
plicity, and brazen faith and trust, and love of life 
and everybody in it. All other real people are getting 
into Literature, why not have real children in it?" 

Reaffirming his views he wrote the editor of the 
Ladies' Home Journal: 

The Indianapolis Journal, October 23, 1890. 
Edward Bok, Esq. 
Dear Mr. Bok: 

Answering your kindly inquiry: Am just now 
going to press with a Holiday book, entitled Rhymes 
of Childhood — nearly a hundred poems, dialect and 
serious equally. In it the enthusiastic writer goes 
scampering barefoot from page to page, with no more 
sense of dignity than socks, and the like wholesome 
rapture in heels and heart. I think of what a child 
Lincoln must have been, and the same child-heart at 
home within his breast when death came by. It is 
all in the line of Fact — that's the stuff that makes 
good fiction, romance, and poetry. I digress to say 
this, but I glory in the crime. Thanking you with all 
heartiness I remain as ever. 

Very truly yours, 

J. W. Riley. 

From the first the book won high favor with the 
children, but it was an enigma to parents. How a 
bachelor could so touch the heart of children was a 
mystery. "I have two 'riders on the knee,' " a mother 



THE POET AT FORTY 283 

wrote him. "I am sorry you had to borrow a little 
nephew for the frontispiece." The poet told her that 
his children lived in the Paradise of Memory. He 
talked rapturously of the gift of Eternal Childhood. 
"When I get that gift," he said, "I will thrill you with 
swarms of hitherto untwittered poems." Looking 
backward (which was his heavenly way of looking 
forward) 

*'He heard the voice of summer streams, 

And, following, he found the brink 

Of cooling springs with childish dreams 

Returning as he kneeled to drink." 

The only excuse for a new poet would seem to be 
that he utter a new word, voice a new phase of emo- 
tion, and this Riley did in his Rhymes of Childhood. 
Its reception was unparalleled in American poetry. 
"You should see all the lovely letters from the literary 
gods," wrote Riley to a friend. "They say things that 
make me pinch myself to see if I am dreaming. I have 
not a dissenting nor timid comment as to the audacity 
of part of the book. First and most exacting of the 
literary high-lights are daily thumping my shoulders 
through the mail. Simply all is well, and very well — 
can not begin to supply the demand." 

"The book," wrote William Dean Howells in Ear- 
per's Magazine, "takes itself quite out of the category 
of ordinary verse, and refuses to be judged by the 
usual criterions. The fact is, our Hoosier Poet has 
found lodgment in the people's love, which is a much 
safer place for any poet than their admiration. What 
he has said of very common aspects of life has en- 



tf 



284 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

deared him to the public. You feel, in reading his 
Verse, that here is one of the honestest souls that ever 
uttered itself in that way/' 

'Thanks a thousand, thousand times,'' wrote Mark 
Twain, "for the charming book which laments my own 
lost youth for me as no words of mine could do. 

There came also the usual fine word from 



Washington, D. C, December, 1890. 
Dear Mr. Riley: 

Your Rhymes of Childhood makes a delightful vol- 
ume. They come home especially to the hearts of 
those who grew up as you and I did in small western 
towns. I hardly know which class of poems I like 
best, those in which the children do the talking, or 
those in which you speak in your own proper person. 
They are eqiially good, natural and genuine. I thank 
you very much for remembering me and remain, 
Yours faithfully, 

John Hay. 

The summit of praise, in Riley's opinion, was 
reached in Kipling's lines. A copy of the Rhymes had 
been presented to the British author by George Hitt, 
who was then residing in London. ''To J. W. R 
Kipling entitled them : 



ff 



"Your trail runs to the westward, 
And mine to my own place; 
There is water between our lodges, 
And I have not seen your face; 

"But since I have read your verses 
It is easy to guess the rest, 
Because in the hearts of the children 
There is neither East nor West. 



THE POET AT FORTY 285 

"Bom to a thousand fortunes 

Of good or evil hap, 
Once they were kings together, 
Throned in a mother's lap. 

"Surely they know that secret — 

Yellow and black and white, 
When they meet as kings together 
In innocent dreams at night, 

"With a moon they all can play with — 

Grubby and grimed and unshod: 
Very happy together, 
And very near to God. 

"Your trail runs to the westward, 

And mine to my own place; 
There is water between our lodges. 
And you can not see my face. 

"And that is well — for crying 

Should neither be written nor seen, 
But if I call you Smoke-in-the-Eyes, 
I know you will know what I mean/' 



CHAPTER XVI 

ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 

HOW old are you? "On the sunny side of forty," 
Riley would answer, leaving the Paul Pry to 
infer which side. The poet was on the "west" 
side of that meridian before he reached his settled 
place of abode — 

"Gracious anchorage, at last, 
From the billows of the vast 
Tide of life that comes and goes. 
Whence and where nobody knows." 

He had been a Bohemian. "Bear in mind," he would 
write his friends, "the contingencies of my Nomadic 
existence' — I myself not knowing certainly what will 
turn up next, or when, or how. I have tacks in my 
course, and reefs in my sails — my eye on changing 
winds. About all I know is the direction I am trying 
to go." 

Immediately preceding his residence in Lockerbie 
Street Riley had a room at the Denison House. He 
took his meals wherever he might be when hungry, — 
his old-time practice of living at restaurants, pamper- 
ing his erratic appetite and entertaining original views 
on diet as he had done when first employed on the In- 
dianapolis Journal. "Bread," said one of his associ- 
ates, "he considered an invention of the devil, and 

286 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 287 

would have none of it, crackers being a substitute. 
While business men had lunch the poet had his break- 
fast. He was long on oyster stews, and cheese and 
mince pies." Among a hundred other eccentricities 
was his taste in tablewear. Having lived in restau- 
rants all his life he was not used to thin china, would 
have only heavy wear such as was safe in the hands of 
clumsy waiters. His main meal was six o'clock dinner, 
with coffee and crackers at midnight. "Let us be 
cheerily contented," he wrote a friend in 1890. "Right 
here I am going out with a prowling, midnight pie- 
eating pal, who paces at my door and will not rest un- 
til I join him in our customary, unholy feast, which 
we always relish the more for being assured that we 
positively should not eat such things at such hours." 

Living on the wing, Riley termed it, now in a hotel, 
now with his brother-in-law, now with his physician, 
and next "off somewhere lecturing." "Think of it," 
said he, "I never owned a desk in my life and don't 
know what it is to own a library. Where do I write? 
Everywhere — sometimes on the kitchen table in my 
sister's house, then in the parlor and again on the 
printer's case — just where the fancy seizes me. Queer 
how and where authors write. Andrew Lang wrote 
best in a rose garden — Tolstoi sat on a bed and put 
his inkstand on a pillow — Dumas used an ebony desk 
— ^the lid to Mary Anderson's table was mother-of- 
pearl. None of your luxuries for the little bench-leg 
poet. Give him a bleak room, the more uncomfortable 
the better." 

He had been like his friend Charles Warren Stod- 
dard, disposed to "streak off to odd parts of the world 
with little choice as to where," the difference being 



288 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

that his friend went to the Navigator Islands or some 
other oceanic spot, while Riley sallied 

"Out to Greenfield where the Muse 
Dips her sandal in the dews 
Sacredly as night and dawn." 

"For years," the poet wrote in "The Boy from 
Zeeny," "I have been a wanderer from the dear old 
town of my nativity, but through all my wanderings 
a gracious fate has always kept me somewhere in its 
pleasant neighborhood, and in consequence I often pay 
brief visits to the scenes of my long-vanished boy- 
hood." 

A day came when Stoddard turned his face toward 
Indiana. "Come, by all means!" Riley wrote him in 
January, 1891. "Only, give us fair warning and we'll 
arrange the best possible for your entertainment, and 
our mutual strife in allaying your restlessness. In 
that particular I may prove a not all unworthy rival 
— for already for years I have worn the haircloth off 
the most uncomfortable surroundings every day. Any 
commodious accessory at any time obtruding, I find 
another hotel ; simply I will not be put upon by conve- 
niences. Every valuable letter, book, picture, keepsake, 
manuscript I ever had in the world IVe got safely 
locked up in some other trunk — some place else. But 
it's safe — Omygodyes! That's one thing I like about 
me, — I'm so careful, and always so well situated to 
jump and skite for a train and ride off a-skallyhootin' 
with my bow legs gracefully unfurled from the rear 
platform of the last car! — Which reminds me — ^I'm 
just now rehearsing for some big fat lecture dates 
which I'm loathfully about to tackle — ^within ten days. 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 289 

But rm not going to be pressed or crowded, chased and 
run like a scared dog ever again on earth! and I can 
make more money this way, too, I find, and maintain 
a far higher tone, don't you know. So from this on, 
mind you, when Little Tommy Tucker sings for his 
supper, it means also a supper for his every friend, 
as well — and it means a supper, moreover, at Delmoni- 
co*s! Ho, ho! ho! says L. T. Tucker!'* 

"Sometimes I jot down a little eighty-cent thought," 
— so Riley once remarked to Bill Nye. "I put it away 
carefully somewhere and afterwards, unable to find it, 
it is lost. I have never owned a dictionary or a library, 
because I have been flitting about from room to room 
and can not keep anything." 

"Our Hoosier Poet was in an Indian Summer of 
gladness," said Nye, "when he found the 'eighty-cent 
thought,' and the birds and the angels loved to asso- 
ciate with him. His soul was all aglow with sunshine, 
but when, after hunting for it two days and the gloom 
of the third night settled down upon him, he could 
not find it, his soul was aglow with a red reflection 
from the great coke works where the worm dieth not 
and the fire department is an ignominious failure." 

The poet's anchorage in Lockerbie Street dates 
from the summer of 1893. "I am getting tired of this 
way of living," he remarked to friends down-tovm one 
evening — "clean, dead tired, and fagged out and sick 
of the whole Bohemian business." Later, another eve- 
ning, he was the guest of Major Charles L. Holstein 
at the latter's residence. Many years the men had 
been fast friends. The Major's family, including his 
wife and her father and mother, had been especially 
fond of Riley's society, and in the years gone by the 



290 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

poet had accepted many invitations to dinner. On this 
particular evening, as he was leaving, Riley said to 
the Major, "I am never coming back again except on 
one condition." Rather startled, the Major asked the 
condition. "That I come as a boarder," returned 
Riley. The condition was readily and gladly accepted 
and ever afterward the poet lived at 528 Lockerbie 
Street — Lockerbie Land, he called the broad, old- 
fashioned brick house with its air of quiet refinement 
and solid comfort — never possessing the property in 
his own name, yet having the joys and privileges of 
home, receiving visitors and friends and delegations 
of admirers in his old bachelor days with the same 
freedom that Irving received them at Sunnyside. 

A quiet little street of two irregular squares. — ran 
a description of it when the poet first saw it, right 
in the heart of the town with vine-wreathed homes and 
flower gardens above the sidewalks in the shade of 
maples and sycamores— a gracious retreat for "a poet 
who had no home, no children and no flowers." Riley 
wrote in his poem, "Lockerbie Street" — 

"There is such a relief, from the clangor and din 
Of the heart of the town, to go loitering in 
Through the dim, narrow walks, with the sheltering 

shade 
Of the trees waving over the long promenade, 
And littering lightly the ways of our feet 
With the gold of the sunshine of Lockerbie Street." 

The birth of the poem — ^thirteen years before Riley 
came to live in the shady retreat — affords another in- 
stance of his capricious way of investing an incident 
with mystery, his way of eluding facts, which was often 




a 




m 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 291 

provoking to a sedate reporter in search of them. Dili- 
gently the poet sought to minimize the importance of 
his own performance. In a postscript to Ella 
Wheeler, (July, 1880), he artfully referred to the in- 
cident which prompted the poem. **Had a glance or 
two from a mysterious young lady who whizzes about 
town with a vixenish mare and a clay-colored gig. And 
I tracked her at last to her hidden fastness, and to- 
morrow I publish this adroit indication of the fact — 
hoping her cunning eyes will fall upon it." (Here 
followed copy of the poem complete.) At another time 
Riley said : ''Chance first led me into Lockerbie Street. 
Chance has brought me many gifts. Chance has sig- 
nally contributed to my salvation." While out driv- 
ing with a friend he came one afternoon to the corner 
of Lockerbie and East Streets. The shady thorough- 
fare seemed to invite him. At the same moment the 
mysterious young lady whizzed past in the clay-colored 
gig. The poet observed that she alighted in front of 
the old-fashioned brick house. This incident was all 
the foundation there was for the fanciful postscript 
to Miss Wheeler. "I caught the trick phrase while 
out driving," said Riley, "and it began at once to 
warble in my heart. A day or so after I revisited the 
street. Walking back to the office, I repeated the 
phrase with every footstep — Lockerbie Street — 
Lockerbie Street — Lockerbie Street. The words clung 
to me like tickseed to a tiger. That night I wrote the 
poem and next day copied it from memory, on a tall 
table in the office and sent it to the editor in answer to 
call for 'copy,' never dreaming of its subsequent suc- 
cess." The poem appeared in the Indianapolis Journal 
the following morning. On reaching the office that day 



292 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the poet found his desk covered with flowers, the gift 
of residents in Lockerbie Street, who had read the 
poem at their breakfast tables. 

A half-century before Riley wrote the poem, one 
George Lockerbie, a Scotchman, had cleared a little 
farm at the edge of the forest and when the baby 
street was born it was christened after the farmer. 
Riley had not coined the name as some, even his near 
friend Burdette, had thought. "The poem," said Bur- 
dette, "had the natural, child-dancing step of heart 
poems, and the name fitted in so well with the rhythm 
that I thought it was merely one of Fancy's songs, 
with an airy habitation and a dream name. Because 
in those days Jamesie did not live in Lockerbie Street, 
and never expected to pitch his tent on the pleasant 
city lane, which did not belong in town at all, but 
which loitered too long at the edge of the meadow, 
and was overtaken and hemmed in by the growing 
city, always hungry for the pastures and the fringing 
woods that lie without the walls." 

Lockerbie Street was a paradise to Burdette and he 
was always grateful for the loyal hearts in it — and 
that was what Riley desired it to be, a Little Arcadia, 
so quiet and shady that the sun could not destroy the 
freshness of the night. 

In the years after his "anchorage" he had two lit- 
erary dens, such as they were, one his quiet room in 
Lockerbie Street, the other the "Chimney Corner" 
with his publishers at their old location on Washing- 
ton Street. Day after day he vibrated between the 
two, and when strangers became too numerous and 
too insistent at the latter, he sought the refuge of the 
former, where at times he was all but inaccessible. 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 293 

Frank G. Carpenter found him "harder to get at than 
the President of the United States/' Robert Burns 
Wilson suspected him of hiding away from the critics. 
Riley being one of the most potent literary forces then 
at work in America, it was to be expected that his 
books would be "slashingly criticized." "They are 
jumping on you," wrote Wilson. "Well, let them jump. 
They can not hurt you," the inference being that Riley 
was secure in the hearts of the people^ — and in Lock- 
erbie Street. 

Even his lovable, long-suffering friend, Bliss Car- 
man, could not detach him from his quiet retreat. "I 
have been perfecting a long cherished plan," wrote 
Carman one May day, "a plot it is to capture you for 
a week this summer in the mountains. I feel that if 
I can only get a rope around you and get you there you 
won't regret it. The place is the Catskills. Very quiet 
and secluded. Nothing to do but to walk over the 
hills by forest trails or sit on the porch and listen to 
the birds. Just trees and hills and air and view every- 
where. You helped me over many an hour in the 
past and I feel I have more need to see you since good 
old Richard Hovey went away — detained by some great 
enterprise, I guess." 

There was silence in the little room and in the 
Chimney Corner. In June Carman wrote again: 
"Didst never receive a letter from me written from 
Washington in May? Or art thou only a delinquent 
correspondent? Anyhow take a pen and sit down 
quickly and write me for I have need of you in my 
business. So God love you and remove from you the 
sin of procrastination." Still Riley sinned against his 
brother in that regard. The call of the Catskills and 



294 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Carman was very great, but not sufficient to lure him 
from Lockerbie Street. 

When he was hifed from home by "fat lecture 
dates," there was a tug at his heart-strings that Riley 
had not felt since his youthful days in the old Green- 
field homestead. The Holstein family circle, hidden 
away from the **horrific noise of the railroad," was 
remembered daily. Mrs. Holstein was the "Saint Lock- 
erbie" of the circle, and Riley often so addressed her. 
The Major also had his by-names, while the family as 
a whole was "The Lockerbies." The poet amused the 
Lockerbies With many quaint signatures: "Little Oak- 
Man," the "Wandering Jew," "LeRoy Kingen," "Jimp- 
sy," and "James Whipcord Riley." Numerous letters 
passed to and fro, and often the Little Oak-Man sent 
home a "wail of woe," when "rain was in possession 
of the universe," or he had to ride "thirty miles in a 
freight caboose" — or some other sorry something 
made him doubly homesick. A few excerpts show the 
tenor of the letters. 

Green Fields and Running Brooks, Indiana, 

August 2, 1893. 
Dear Lockerbies: 

As friends of his in his more prosperous days, you 
may be interested to know that old Jim Riley has 
drifted back here and obtained employment at his old 
trade. He is now painting and varnishing at my resi- 
dence, and I can say in his behalf — should you have 
any plain work of the kind this fall — Jim's the feller 
for you to git. He does good work and don't ask no 
fancy prices. Give him a call. Also cistern-walling, 
shingling, and Conveyancing. 

Yours truly, 

LeRoy Kingen. 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 295 

The simplicity and the modesty of Lockerbie Street 
were in sharp contrast to the display and the show 
he found at points along the way when traveling. 
Offensive egotism in one section drew from him a 
characteristic protest. ''Every one," he wrote home, 
"says my house, or Tny store, or my hotel, or my bank, 
or my mining interests, or mi/ horses, or my crop, 
or my outlook: — My God! how they do wear out a 
stranger! Thank heaven I am turning towards m?/ 
home again. Twill not be long — tell every lovely 
friend back there in Indiany. Tell the city authori- 
ties to load up their fire department hose with my 
never-failing love and esteem, and splash it all over 
the blessed municipality. When I die, I expect to 
wake right up again in Indianapolis, and though I have 
heard Heaven very highly spoken of, I will more than 
likely remark: Well, boys, you hain't overdrawed the 
pictur* ary particle.' " 

The poet seldom quoted the Bible, but when he did 
it was most effective. Once, after returning from a 
great city, which, as he thought, was running to waste 
and wickedness in the pursuit of pleasures and riches, 
he read from the Bible, drawling out the words so 
impressively and emphatically, that his listener had a 
sense of shame for his country: 

I made me great tvorks; I builded me houses; I 
planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, 
and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit, I 
bought men-servants and maid^servants, and had ser- 
vants born in my hou^e; I had great possessions of 
herds and flocks, above all that were before me in 
Jerusalem; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the 
treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men- 



296 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

singers and women-singers, and the delights of the 
sons of men, and mitsical instruments, and that of all 
sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all 
that were before me in Jerusalem, 

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had 
wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; 
and, behold, all tvas vamity, and a striving after wind. 

He once remarked that all this noise we call com- 
mercial prosperity is just an endless, ingenious strife 
to separate a man from his money. "What does it all 
mean?" he queried sorrowfully — "this rumbling of 
trucks and milk wagons over cobblestones — ^this jin- 
gling and jangling of telephones — ^this moan of trol- 
leys and subways^ — ^this pushing and shoving of 
crowds, as if the whole human family had to be 
jammed through the gangway in an hour. Is it any 
wonder that the madness leads to the sanitarium and 
the grave?" 

Thus was he usually miserable in a great metrop- 
olis. In a state of confusion he once wrote from New 
York City: 

Westminster Hotel, February, 1894. 
Dear Saint and Charles Lockerbie : 

Will you share this hasty letter? How I am panted 
out with travel and starvation, and here of course the 
panic is in full possession of me. Everybody wants 
me to go everywhere and I don't know where to turn 
or what to try to do — for I know it won't work — ^not 
for me. In consequence people are getting mad at 
me in regiments. I try to stay in and, thank God, 
mainly succeed. Reached here about twelve last 
night, and was kept up till three with accumulated 
worries and messages. After breakfast went to the 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 297 

Centm*y — did not a thing but stand on one foot, and 
then on its poor contemporary, which wanted its new 
shoe off and frozen toes tucked up in its blissful bed- 
gown. Again faced the razor-bladed weather back 
around Union Square where Conkling lost his life — 
and again attained my room. But not to sleep — ohh, 
nohhh! Table piled full of mail that simply snows 
here from all sorts of charity endeavors, and people 
who want to keep the wolf from their particular doors 
with frank ingenuous contributions from millionaire 
poets like myself, of whose verses they are so passion- 
ately fond. And books, books, my own books, — stable 
wobblin' with 'em — waitin' for my very latest, freshest 
autographs. With all this I pleasantly beguile me 
leisure hours. 

"God bless you," he wrote from Syracuse, "count all 
the good things you have, and see how very small in- 
deed is the ratio of the bad. I am trying to write here 
cheerily in a room as cold as charity, and on the bot- 
tom of the reversed drawer of the dresser, and with a 
little cambric pen about the size of a Brownie's nut- 
pick. The Fates are after me again in this wintry cli- 
mate. Since yesterday morning, as God hears me, I 
have not been warm. And yet I have been a favored 
guest in the home of wealth — ^have waded through piles 
of Persian rugs and carpets of fabulous Oriental 
looms; and at groaning mahogany boards have been 
proffered wines of every clime — ^but no coffee, hot and 
steaming, the only thing I can drink. Why should I 
suffer myself to be wrenched away from my hotel and 
made a favored guest? Echo answers Why." 

Traveling between lecture points he wrote the fol- 
lowing (after LongfelloVs translation of "La Chau- 
deau") : 



298 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"At La Ker-bie, nor mirth nor wit 
Ever grows old, (surmising it), — 
The youth of a story is never gone, 
And a joke lasts on and on and on — 
Till Matthew Arnold would thrill with glee, 
At La Ker-bie! 

"At La Ker-bie, friends of mine, 
Live, laugh, revel and read and dine; 
And sometimes, by the evening grate, 
Think of the Little Man out so late 
With no home-path, nor no night-key, 
For La Ker-bie! 

"Yet, La Ker-bie— ah. La Ker-bie! — 
As I for you, so yearn for me: 
Look, through smiles, for the by-and-by — > 
Christmas is coming, and so am I! 
Yours forever, and utterly. 

At La Ker-bie ! Jamesie." 

Near the sundown of the poet's afternoon there 
came days when all roads led to Lockerbie Street. His 
habit at heart of looking on the best side of things, 
however outwardly he might complain, had indeed (in 
Sam Johnson phrase) been worth more than a thou- 
sand pounds a year. There were infinite values in 
Lockerbie Street, which gold could not measure — 
heartfelt felicitations ; midnight serenades at his study 
vnndow ; days when his native Indiana paid tribute to 
his art; legions of school children smiling and singing 
through the street; voluminous quantities of mail; 
greetings from far and wide flowing in upon him; 
letters, telegrams and cable messages — and last but 
not least the voice of the loyal Bliss Carman with a 
love tribute in song — 



ANCHORAGE IN LOCKERBIE STREET 299 

"Lockerbie Street is a little street, 

Just one block long; 
But the days go there with a magical air, 

The whole year long. 
The sun in his journey across the sky 
Slows his car as he passes by; 
The sighing wind and the grieving rain 
Change their tune and cease to complain ; 
And the birds have a wonderful call that seems, 
Like a street-cry out of the land of dreams; 
For there the real and the make-believe meet. 
Time does not hurry in Lockerbie Street. 

"Lockerbie Street is a little street. 

Only one block long ; 
A little apart, yet near the heart, 

Of the city's throng. 
If you are a stranger, looking to find 
Respite and cheer for soul and mind. 
And have lost your way, and would inquire 
For a street that will lead you to Heart's Desire, — 
To a place where the spirit is never old. 
And gladness and love are worth more than gold,— 
Ask the first boy or girl that you meet ! 
Every one knows where is Lockerbie Street." 



CHAPTER XVII 

POEMS HERE AT HOME 

A YOUNG man with a poetic ambition once came 
to Riley for literary advice. There was a dearth 
of poetic material in the young man's environ- 
ment — "nothing but inertia and stagnation." He 
longed to go to Princeton or Harvard that he might 
have the impulse of great libraries and the atmosphere 
of culture. "My dear young fellow," replied Riley, 
"God should send you a vision. Lift up your eyes and 
look on the fields white already to harvest. Ex- 
cellence is right here at home where we are falling 
over it and barking our shins against it every day. 
Shape from that thy work of art." 

Riley went on to say that the child of genius Was 
often born under a roof of straw — born tohere God 
intends — and that he is just as likely to find the ma- 
terial for his art in that vicinity as in the neighbor- 
hood of the college. He deplored a man's disloyalty 
to the region of his nativity. If a man was born and 
reared on the banks of Deer Creek, there was a rea- 
son for it — a heavenly reason; he had the same right 
to be there that Mount Washington has to be in New 
England. "Drop a seal in the sea somewhere about 
the Tropic of Cancer," said Riley, "and the homing 
faculty will lead it back to its breeding rock on the 
Arctic Circle. By instinct it knows its native island, 
and that it belongs there." 

300 



POEMS HERE AT HOME 301 

Loyalty to one's home region was forcibly impressed 
upon the poet on the occasion of his only visit to Eng- 
land in the summer of 1891. "My first trip abroad/' 
said he, ''taught me that the United States is a fine 
country in which to live. I saw a great many Ameri- 
cans in London, who, ashamed of their country, 
mingled with the British and attempted to disguise 
their nationality. Many of them succeeded, much to 
the gratification of all true Americans. I was told on 
my return that I had criticized my native land. I 
had not. If all Americans liked me half as well as I 
like them I would be indeed a proud and grateful 
man.'' 

''You have observed," he remarked on another occa- 
sion, "that man uniformly sighs for the land of his 
birth. That is a hint from his Creator that he should 
not disown his native heath. A man reared in a 
prairie country may go to live in a hilly section, but 
there comes a day, if his heart expands as it should, 
when he longs to see the prairies again. He saw no 
poetry in them when he lived there, but he finds it on 
his return. The scales have fallen from his eyes. 
Myron Reed heard a shipload singing in the rain on 
the upper deck at two o'clock in the morning, as they 
approached the Clyde. And what were they singing? 
Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie DoonJ* 

Poets, Riley was told, are birds of passage, who 
range abroad for material, who bring home from 
other climes the seeds that germinate in song; "but 
they seldom find nutritious food in foreign lands," he 
replied. "None of them ever brings home flowers 
half so sweet as those they find in their own neigh- 
borhood." In this connection he had ever at hand a 



302 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

favorite Longfellow sentiment. '*A11 praise/' he would 
repeat, changing the tense of the lines, 

"Be to the bards of simple ways, 
Who walk with Nature hand in hand. 
Whose country is their Holy Land, 
Whose singing robes are homespun brown 
From looms of their native town — 
Which they are not ashamed to wear J* 

His favorite British painters, Riley observed at an- 
other time, had not imitated the old masters. They 
had sought the materials for their pictures in the liv- 
ing world around them. They had gathered in the 
fruit, pressed the grapes, and poured out the wine for 
themselves. They had painted life as they saw it in 
the heart of England, not in Herculaneum or some 
other sepulcher. **The same power that made Vesu- 
vius," said Riley, "made the brook in which you 
splashed when you came from school, and the brook 
holds a story as sweet and full of interest as the tale 
of the volcano." 

What made Riley's advice to young poets so season- 
able was the fact that he himself had not been dis- 
obedient to his own teaching. The world had been to 
him a whispering gallery. He had nourished his 
heart by imbibing from the great fountain of infor- 
mation around him. Daily he had seen the miracle 
of trees and flowers from his own doorway. "Town 
and country," said he, "seemed a great Wonder Book 
whose leaves had never been turned." Nature beck- 
oned him to her companionship : 



POEMS HERE AT HOME 303 

"Come, wander with me," she said, 
'Into regions yet imtrod; 
And read what is still unread 
In the manuscripts of God." 

At the beginning of his literary career Riley had 
wholesome encouragement on this line from Myron 
Reed. *'My advice to a young poet," said Reed, "is to 
remain in America, the most poetic country on the 
globe. Here we have youth ; here the lilacs bloom and 
the plovers fly as they do in Europe. This is a new 
vrorld given to us for new things. There is something 
wrong when the American poet, for lack of material, 
goes back and makes another translation of Virgil." 

Reed had been encouraging, but there had been days 
when the mere mention of the poet's homely material 
provoked ridicule. Riley sometimes grew eloquent 
about the poetry of the Wabash country, meaning 
thereby his own Indiana. "What Riley needs," said 
a distinguished jurist, "is a physician to pass on his 
intelligence." It was absurd to think of finding poetry 
in backyards and backwoods. 

"What is that sound I hear," Riley asked a group 
of Harvard students one snowy day in Boston. "Men 
shoveling snow from, the sidewalk," was the answer. 
"So it is," Riley assented; "and do you know there is 
melody in it^ — poetry in that sound? There are sub- 
jects for poems all about us. If you look you can see 
them in the fields as you ride along the road; meet 
them on the train — types, traits, customs, scenery. 
What the poet needs is discernment." The students 
listened with misgivings. They had thought of poetry 
as something that graced only the high places. 



304 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"Your own Emerson," Riley went on to say to the 
Harvard boys, "enchants us by idealizing our common 
lives and fortunes. When he passes, the drowsy world 
is turned to flame. He tells of riding in a Concord 
coach through the North End of Boston. There, he 
observed, the men and women of the humbler classes 
were unrestrained in their manners and their atti- 
tudes. They were much more interesting than the 
clean-shaven, silk-robed procession in Tremont Street." 

"Forget not the simple things," Joel Chandler Har- 
ris once admonished Riley; "the rotation of the earth 
that takes the mountain into the sunshine carries the 
molehill along with it." To each man it was clear that 
nothing is high because it is in a high place, nothing 
low because it is in a low place. Alike, the two friends 
read the lesson in the bright track of the stars and 
in the dusty course of the poorest thing that drags its 
length upon the ground. As Riley saw it there was 
nothing trivial in God's sight. In the chain of man's 
existence who knows which links are large and which 
are small, which important and which trifling? Great 
men. Reed often reminded him, do not despise any- 
thing. It was all a delusion that big things were di- 
vorced from little things. Newton buckled his shoe 
with the same wit with which he weighed the moon. 
''We condemn our fellow citizens, we cast common 
lives and common things as rubbish to the void," said 
Riley. "The Creator is more merciful. As the poet 
sang it, nothing walks with aimless feet, 



*Not a worm is cloven in vain, 
Not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire.' 



POEMS HERE AT HOME 305 

It is our littleness that makes the lives of others triv- 
ial and their actions cheap. God is in His holy moun- 
tain. He will save that which is lame and gather that 
which was driven away/' 

For similar reasons Riley held that there is nothing 
trivial in biography, "unless it is the life of some char- 
acter too pure and luminous to cast a shadow," he 
said, "one of those idols biographers sometimes hide 
in clouds of incense. Could a man write down in a 
simple style what really happens to him in this life, 
he would be sure to make a good book, though he had 
never met with a single big adventure." 

A favorite tenet — one that many of Riley's friends 
disavowed, Myron Reed among them — was this, that 
at heart the rich and eminent do not think the lives 
of the humble unimportant. Riley often said with 
Mr. Dooley that, barring the fact of education and oc- 
cupation, king, czar, potentate, rich man, poor man, 
beggarman and congressman had all been poured out 
of the same peck measure. The poor were mistaken 
in thinking that distinction forgets the rounds on the 
ladder by which it ascends. Carnegie was once a bob- 
bin boy in a cotton mill. Though enormously rich he 
must, by virtue of his being a member of the human 
family, be always interested in stories or songs about 
other bobbin boys. His heart was on the left side. Let 
a poet write a song, a truthful one, about those in- 
habitants in the north end of Boston and the clean- 
shaven, silk-robed procession in Tremont Street would 
buy it. 

"The humble and poor become great, 
And from brown-handed children 
Grow mighty rulers of state" — 



306 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

authors, artists, inventors and scholars, the wealthy 
and the wise, rising as always from the rank and file 
of to-day to walk in the silk-robed procession of to- 
morrow. The true man does not blush for humble 
beginnings; hence his interest in the literature that 
feeds the spiritual life of the plain people. 

It was his sense of values in common things that 
aroused Riley to the defense of dialect. "The men 
and women who speak dialect," wrote a savage critic, 
"are not worth portraying in literature. It is pre- 
posterous in writers to think they can get close to 
nature by depicting the sterile lives and limited emo- 
tions of proletarians who speak only to tangle their 
tongues and move only to fall over their feet." 

"The people who speak dialect," returned Riley, 
"are as capable of heroism as college men or ladies of 
fashion. Their lives are not sterile. Their emotions 
are not limited. Love of nature, sympathy for the 
suffering, and the capacity for affection are not limited 
to grammarians. Men and women who speak ele- 
gantly are not the only ones made in the image of 
God." 

There were times when the sting of the literary 
hornets — "the old-fashioned, brocaded, base-burning 
critics," as Nye called them — ^was more than Riley 
could stand. At such times the newspaper office was 
his refuge. The reporters did not "blow him up." "I 
am writing this poetry, this folk lore," he said to one 
of the boys, "because of the feeling I have that the 
poets are not writing songs for the plain people. They 
are writing for the classically educated. I do not 
understand them and I know there are many others 
who do not understand them. I feel that there are 



POEMS HERE AT HOME 307 

just as lovely things to write about now, and just as 
lovely things to paint as there were ages ago — if any- 
thing, better, for God is still in His world, and it is 
fair to presume that He has improved a great many 
things. I do not blame the people of my native town 
for their bad humor when foreign correspondents 
come to talk about the monotony of small stores, 
uninteresting streets, country wagons, traders, loun- 
gers, and then return to Chicago or the East to say that 
there is nothing in the town inviting to poetic genius. 
It is the want of poetry in their own heart, their own 
fault, that they did not see the draperies of cloud and 
shadow and color the Creator hangs over Greenfield 
every day. Wherever there is a street, a wood, or 
a brook with a child at play in it, there is a poem, and 
when a man approaches it with the right spirit, he 
will find it, no matter how rough the exterior. Every 
Hoosier bush is afire with God, but only he who sees 
takes off his shoes." 

Riley was strongly of the opinion that every one 
loves poetry, but the people, he thought, are quick to 
disclaim any such liking when charged with it. In 
his best moments every man acknowledges a sense 
of the beautiful. If we talk to him in foreign vocab- 
ularies, in an affected style, and in figures and phrases 
drawn from libraries, we are talking about things 
he does not understand. "So I talk of the things of 
to-day," Riley said: 

"The Golden Age! Oh, turn the page 
Of history! I 'low 
We have as good a Golden Age — 
The Golden Age of Now!" 



308 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Naturally Riley talked of poetry when he visited 
Longfellow. "The world," said Longfellow, ''your 
great world there in the West, is teeming with beauti- 
ful themes. Your poets will never exhaust them." 
'1 understood then," said Riley afterward, **as I had 
vaguely surmised before, that Longfellow always saw 
the poetic in the thing that was nearest to him. He 
made constant use of it. Passing that through the 
workshop of his wonderful imagination, he had 
blessed the world with immortal poems." 

With the publication of his first volumes Riley began 
to think more seriously of his place in American 
literature, encouraged, no doubt, by an editorial in the 
Chicago Herald, At this writing when the East no 
longer holds the artistic West in contempt, the passion 
of the Herald provokes a smile, but it was not a 
smiling matter a quarter-century ago. "The cultured 
circles of the world," said the Herald, "should cease 
to affect surprise when something good in literature 
comes out of the West. Why should one be surprised 
that the birthplace of a poet is in a country town? 
What clime is alone congenial to the birth and foster- 
ing of genius? What locality can be recommended 
as sure to produce phenomena in literature? What 
land has produced great men only, and what winds 
have fanned the brows of great women only? It is 
proper to note that genius scorns birth and condition, 
and flames up in utter disregard of the canons of cul- 
ture. The men who have given the world its enter- 
tainment have come from the ends of the earth and 
have been citizens in the republic of mind, not because 
they saw the same landscape and ate the same dishes 
as their judges, but because there was in them that 



POEMS HERE AT HOME S09 

which bid defiance to geography and convention and 
brought from obscurity the credentials to fame. 
James Whitcomb Riley emerged from a past too ob- 
scure to be interesting to eastern writers, and yet a 
few touches of his lance have gained him a place on 
the pavilion of letters. The people have accepted him. 
He speaks to the world in tuneful measures and the 
world is glad to listen. 

"Genius is genius," the Herald concluded, "no mat- 
ter where it is born, no matter where it is bred. It 
comes to fruition without regard to teaching and sets 
new standards everywhere. It is time to serve notice 
that genius never seeks a congenial clime and that it 
does not wait to have its copy set, but makes the 
model the world approves. It is time to say that it 
may be looked for in the West as in the East, in the 
country as in the town — time to say that he who be- 
trays surprise at the locality of its fame, advertises 
his own ignorance, prejudice, and sophistry." 

Although "tuneful measures" had gushed from his 
heart, there was always for Riley the sad memory of 
days when the world had not listened to him, days of 
doubt, pathetic days. 

Late in life he related to his secretary the story of 
a little Scotch play in which in one scene villagers 
placed wreaths and garlands on a monument to the 
village poet, who had not been appreciated while 
among them, and had wandered away to die. Over 
and over Riley pictured to himself such a fate; night 
after night he had wondered whether the public would 
appreciate his song. In this connection he related J. 
G. Holland's wonderful story of "Jacob Hurd's Child," 
— one of the first poems he ever read — a child born in 



310 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

witchcraft times. The baby was filled with a curious, 
intangible spirit that wove for it a little world of its 
own, where it lived and dreamed and talked with 
strange, wonderful people, and knew strange, wonder- 
ful things. Coming home from a day in the meadows 
with its cheeks flushed and its eyes big with miracles 
it had seen and heard, it would tell its father and 
mother what had happened to it alone among the 
flowers. The Puritan father and mother were horri- 
fied. The child's vision was an illusion. It had seen 
nothing and heard nothing. Soon it was whispered 
about that the child was a witch. In the end the child 
died of a fever, and the parents never knew what they 
had possessed and what they had lost. 

"Well,*' said Riley, "in the days when my future 
was misty I was that child. In my own weak way I 
had the gift of prophecy. I was not made like others." 
His thoughts were weird and wild. He told marvel- 
ous stories. The saddle and bridle on the horse he 
rode blazed with jewels. He garnered a curious wis- 
dom — 

"And many were the times 
When he sat in the sun the livelong day 
And sang to himself in rhymes." 

Would the people love his rhymes as he had loved 
them, or would they disregard them, think them too 
common and ordinary for applause? Would the 
public smite him as the Puritan father in an evil 
moment had smitten his child? Was there a reward 
for faith in visions and loyalty to purpose, or was his 
fate to be disastrous? He did not know. The tor- 



POEMS HERE AT HOME 311 

tures of the wheel and the rack! What were they 
compared to mental agonies over such uncertainties. 

In 1893 there came a letter from Rudyard Kipling 
that would have been a glorious windfall in Riley's 
days of doubt and gloom. "I remember it," said 
Riley, some years after receiving it ; "and I remember 
my reflections. I had been praised by one of the most 
exacting men in literature. He called a spade a spade. 
Another thing I remember. There was Kipling, 
twenty-seven years old, the author of eleven volumes, 
while I, going on forty-five, was crowing over my 
little family of seven. Still another thing to his 
credit. He had been brave enough to marry, and 
best of all had had the courage to come to America 
for his bride. Your little bench-leg singer, on the 
other hand, was still moaning under his old sign at 
Lone Tree. Everybody was praying and plotting for 
him, heart and soul, like Congress on a pension bill, 
but failing miserably to find the cardinal device in the 
ceremony — a woman who would like to have a poet 
for a husband.'' 

Riley had sent a set of his books to Kipling, who 
wrote from Vermont: ''Your Seven Brothers came 
sooner than I thought. It is not for me to criticize 
the merits of the same, but 1 wish to remark and my 
language is plain' that I am very sick of digging up 
radishes every twenty minutes to see how their poor 
little roots are getting on; and sweating and swear- 
ing and clucking in print over the nature and proper- 
ties and possibilities of the American literature that 
is to be. Therefore, when I find a man sitting down 
and singing what his life is round him and his neigh- 
bors' lives, as a poet sees them with their ideas and 



312 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

their hopes and their fears all properly set out and 
plotted and calculated for his particular section of the 
country, I rejoice with a great joy because half a 
dozen poems of that kind are worth as near as I can 
make it out four and three-quarters tons of the pre- 
cious, self-conscious, get-on-to-my-curves stuff that is 
solemnly put forward as the great American exhibit. 
What you write incidentally of the Hoosier holds good 
for country life over a large area. That is why my 
farmer next door approves of *The Frost on the 
Punkin,' and why I hug myself over *Coon-Dog Wess.' 
Also why I choke over *Mahala Ashcraft' — and be- 
cause I don't know why I choke I am moderately sure 
that there is a poet at the keyboard. Go on, in Allah's 
name, go on!" 

Years later Henry Van Dyke came West to address 
the Indiana Teachers' Association. It seemed to Riley 
that his friend had come out of the Orient to say a 
final word on the subject. "It is a great thing," said 
Van Dyke in part to the Association, "for one who 
lives away off on the eastern coast to come to this 
Middle West, where it is easier to find that which is 
so much talked about — ^the true American spirit. This 
is the section where that spirit is — I will not say ram- 
pant — but where it is triumphant and still on top. I 
do not suppose there is any place in the United States 
to-day where people are more thoroughly alive and in 
earnest in regard to the burning problem of our land 
than they are here. 

"And what is that problem and question? It is 
vrhether a government of the people and by the people 
and for the people shall really endure upon the earth. 
And the answer to that question — ^now don't think it 



POEMS HERE AT HOME 313 

strange — depends upon whether poetry and that for 
which poetry stands, is going to survive in the hearts 
of the American people. I believe it will survive. 
More and more the people will care for poetry. The 
peasant in his cottage has his ballad; the fisherman 
upon the Arctic Sea has his chant ; the philosopher has 
his treasury of song that lies close to his heart. There 
is not a far region of this world, amid the polar seas 
or beneath the burning sun of the equator, where some 
dauntless explorer has not carried in his pocket some 
volume of his loved poetry. 

"Poetry preserves for us the glorious memories of 
history. Through poetry we know the glory that was 
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. Poetry 
keeps for us the intimate life, the inner life of the 
race. Where have we so much of the inner life of 
Scotland as we have in Burns? So much of New Eng- 
land as we have in Whittier? So much of Indiana as 
we have in Riley? 

''When men talk about the decline of poetry, the 
extinction of poetry in America, the question is 
whether America is to be a nation that will grow rich 
and crumble and disappear, or will it be a nation that 
will live forever." 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 

T was not the habit of the Hoosier Poet to explain. 
Again and again his friends saw him as through 
a glass darkly. At times he took conspicuous 
pride in concealing his thought and his way of doing 
things. Many assumptions concerning him remained 
assumptions. The more his friends sought to know 
his history the more capriciously he concealed it. In 
retaliation they took delight in retailing legends and 
local anecdotes about him. They were apparently 
quite willing to be deceived. To his co-workers on the 
Indianapolis Journal he was a mystery, not a great 
mystery, but a mystery nevertheless. "It is a wonder 
now," wrote Anna Nicholas on the occasion of his 
death, "that he accomplished so much, for it was a 
standing joke in the Journal office that he never 
worked — ^that is, that he never knew work as the rest 
knew it. The time spent at his desk was brief com- 
pared to the hours that other more commonplace 
writers found necessary. And yet a look at the six- 
teen volumes of his poems shows that he did work." 
Authors also knew not what to make of it. "I have 
not words," wrote Joseph Knight from London in the 
'nineties, "to express my admiration of your work, nor 
my astonishment, how in the course of a journalistic 
career, you found time to throw off those beautiful 
lyrics in such quick succession." 

314 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 315 

While employed on the Anderson Democrat Riley 
wrote ''The Frog/' which hopelessly entangled the 
speculations of his companions. "What is this thing 
you call the frog?'' they asked. ''The poet," Riley 
answered, more seriously than they surmised. "Don't 
you know that a poet lives an amphibious life? We 
think the frog should drown in water; he does not — 
just why I can not explain. Nor can I explain the 
two lives of the poet. For instance, the poet sees 
things in the night that his brethren of the day do not 
see nor believe. The Night 

"Under her big black wing 
Tells him the tale of the world outright 
And the secret of everything. 

And sometimes when the poet is in the grip of old 
Giant Despair, in a deep well, for instance, and knows 
not how to get out, he can see through the sky, see 
through it as he sees through a pane of glass, and 
thus see stars in the heavens that denizens of the day 
do not see. Seeing heavenly things he is thus enabled 
to see human things — 

"All paths that reach the human heart. 
However faint and dim. 
He journeys, for the darkest night 
Is light as day to him." 

Often to the casual observer, Riley did not seem to 
be at work. "No," he would say to reporters, "I am 
not doing anything now; just nibbling a few literary 
caramels." Later he would say to a friend, "They do 
not seem to understand that when a writer is doing 



316 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

nothing, just smoldering, so to say, he is actually 
doing his hardest work. Even the old industrious 
Sam Johnson took pride in being an idle fellow." 

Later in Riley's career two questions called per- 
sistently for answer — When and How did he write his 
poems? He wrote them in "the ambrosial dark,*' 
wrote them while his companions slept, wrote them 
as Longfellow did with a feather stolen from the sable 
wing of night. **At night,'' he once remarked, "the 
moments for a poet are supreme. Then angels listen 
to the whisper of his pencil as he writes." 

The habit was formed at a very early date. While 
painting signs for local merchants he slept with the 
night watchman in the old Greenfield Bank. If the 
watchman woke at midnight he usually found the 
Painter Poet sitting by a dim lamp with a pencil and 
tablet in his hand. When warned against the loss of 
sleep he waved his hand for silence and went on writ- 
ing. 

Poor Richard told the folks of his time that the 
night created thoughts for the day to hatch. Riley 
reversed the order — the sleep of the day creating 
thoughts for the night to hatch. "I do my writing 
almost entirely by night," he remarked to an editor, 
"sleeping several hours during the day and resting 
the remainder of the time. I just dote on writing one 
lonesome poem all at once, and believe me, the night 
is the time to write it. A hungry dog with a new 
bone is not happier than I am when hinged to a poem 
at two o'clock in the morning. People have the im- 
pression that I do not work — I work while they sleep. 
Although I may lose several pounds, I get better re- 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 817 

suits." In his "Open Letter" to Benj. S. Parker the 
poet's hand creeps along the page while others sleep : 

"All the night for him holds naught 
But wakefulness and weary thought; 
A hand that wavers and grows wan 
On its long journey toward the dawn 
That often breaks upon his sight 
As drear and barren as the night; 
A hand that writes of smiling skies 
Pressing the lids of rainy eyes 
Between the lines of joy and glee 
Born out of gloom and agony." 

The night was a benediction, a great presence. 
Sorrow vanished, or if it remained, the night like a 
sympathetic mother gently laid her hand on the 
fevered brow. "The dead of night was the noon of 
thought." 

In "The Morgue," the night was God's shadow. "I 
will remember thee upon my bed," he would whisper, 
"and meditate on thee in the night watches. In the 
shadow of thy wings will I praise thee with joyful 
lips" — which being interpreted meant that he would 
meditate in rapture on nameless visions of beauty and 
simplicity and love — ^the gifts of God to the poet for 
poems. 

At night Riley inclined to inanimate objects as if 
they were alive. Such was his fancy when writing in 
the "Crow's Nest." In the Seminary Homestead there 
was a quaint old clock in a huge cherry case, 

"Where seconds dripped in the silence 
As the rain dripped from the eaves." 



318 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

It talked to him and gathered secrets from folks dur- 
ing the day for his use at night. "Its whisperings/' 
said he, ''could be heard all over the house, and when 
its bell broke the silence of midnight it woke up the 
frogs and water bugs on the banks of Brandywine. 
Long-buried thoughts stole from their graves and 
came to haunt me." 

The poet did his best work in the late watches of 
the night. *Then the pageant of commercial life did 
not molest me," said he. "Time was unsoiled. It had 
a dove's wing and a silken sound. Almost always I 
heard the clock strike four. Often a very tuneful sen- 
timent came to the door of my lips : 

*Four by the clock ! and yet not day ; 
But the great world rolls and wheels away, 
With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, 
Into the dawn that is to be !' " 

It is in the interest of accuracy to add that Riley 
did not keep abnormal hours after his "three weeks 
at a stretch" had terminated, and the vehemence, the 
lofty ecstasy of creative passion had subsided. "Then," 
he said, "the mercury dropped from 104 degrees to 
temperate, and my sleeping hours met the legal re- 
quirements." 

In the night he exchanged greetings with the days 
and the friends gone by. Lost companions came and 
built near him the fire of companionship. Sometimes 
he was serious with them ; at other times quite whim- 
sical. "You don't believe in ghosts," he remarked late 
in life to his secretary — "well, I do. Indeed it is 
easier to believe than not to believe in them. The lad 
I was when I stood in the solitude of the woods, by 



•^-\ 




Greenfield the Morning after Lee's Surrender 




The Old Masonic Hall, 

FOE A 



Geeenfield, to which the Poet Retukned 
Public Reading in 1896 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 319 

Tharpe's Pond, comes to associate with me at night. 
He is not a tangible being, not a body you can touch 
with a finger, but a vivid presence here in my room 
nevertheless. He is the ghost of my boyhood self, and 
when he lingers round, my heart is warm, and I revel 
in past emotions and bygone times. I tread the 
scenes of my youth as Dickens did, dig up buried 
treasures, and revisit the ashes of extinguished fires. 

"Piping down the valleys wild, 

Piping songs of pleasant glee, 
On a cloud I saw a child. 

And he, laughing, said to me — 

" 'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe. 
Sing thy songs of happy cheer' — 
So I sung the same again, 
While he wept with joy to hear. 

" 'Piper, sit thee down and write 
In a book that all may read' — 
So he vanished from my sight; 
And I plucked a hollow reed, 

"And I made a rural pen, 

And I stained the water clear. 
And I wrote my happy songs. 
Every child may joy to hear." 

For a long while Riley was silent as to the author- 
ship of those lines. It gave him pleasure to caress 
and to hide them. Subsequently he gave a clue, and 
when the secretary traced them back to William Blake 
in the favorite British Painters, the poet talked freely 
about what the world terms the fallacies of vision. In 
youth he had enshrined the lines in his heart. Before 



320 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

reading the story of Blake, he had begun to live a life 
of dreamy abstraction. He had always been afflicted 
with periods of despair, which in turn were succeeded 
by moments of great exaltation. When a boy at play 
in the woods, a shadow would descend upon him, and 
after an hour of gloom end in ^'exquisite agony." 
Later he became more susceptible to spiritual influ- 
ences. He began to see the forms and listen to the 
voices of the masters of other days. He had flights 
of genius, or whatever name you may give it, into re- 
gions far above the ordinary sympathies of human na- 
ture. "Imagine my frenzy," said Riley, "when I read 
that Blake at twilight hurried to the seashore to hold 
high converse with the dead. At the seaside he for- 
got the present; he lived in the past; he formed 
friendships with Homer and Pindar and Virgil. Great 
men appeared before him and he talked with them. 
In golden moments they entrusted him with their 
confidence. 

"And then to think," Riley added vehemently, "of 
a matter-of-fact biographer, a man who could not 
paint a dreaming fancy if he tried a thousand years 
— think of his saying that Blake mistook the vivid 
figures which swarmed before his eyes for the poets 
and heroes of old. By what law of the unseen could 
the chronicler say that celestial tongues had not com- 
manded the artist to work miracles? If anybody 
writes about me in that way, saying that my dreams 
were phantoms, just the baseless fabric of a vision, I 
will come out of my grave and pelt him with the head- 
stone." 

On a subsequent evening when the poet was revamp- 
ing poems, he was more whimsical than serious. At 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 821 

midnight there was a halt for milk and crackers, and 
"a little ambrosia" from a stimulating book. "I almost 
wish," his secretary read from the book, "there were 
no day; that we could never peep through the blanket 
of the dark; but always live under those genial influ- 
ences, which the spirits of the other world have se- 
lected as most agreeable for visits to this earth — the 
witching hour when ghosts and goblins walk." Work 
continued till three o'clock, the small hour of the ne^v 
day. Suddenly a Tom cat broke the silence, "yodling 
and yowling" in his lonely way while he walked the 
fence beneath the window. Riley listened for several 
moments, his head still bending over his work. ''Edgar 
Allan Poe!" he drawled out, to which the secretary 
added — "the witching hour when ghosts and goblins 
walk." 

To Riley the night was a guest that had been lin- 
gering somewhere in space, and had come down the 
pathways of dusk to greet him on the threshold. "Do 
you know," he writes in his sketch, "Eccentric Mr. 
Clark," "that the night is a great mystery to me — a 
great mystery! To me the night is like some vast, 
incomprehensible being. When I write the name 
'night' I instinctively write it with a capital. And I 
like my nights deep and dark and swarthy. Some like 
clear and starry nights, but they are too pale for me — 
too weak and fragile altogether! They are popular 
with the masses, of course, these blue-eyed, golden- 
haired moonlight-on-the-lake nights; but, someway I 
do not stand in with them. My favorite night is the 
pronounced brunette — the darker the better." 

Precisely as "Mr. Clark" did, the poet drifted into 
the deepening gloom and was swallowed up in it — lost 



322 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

utterly. He wanted to "wade out into the darkness 
and knead it in his hands like dough." 

In 'The Flying Islands" the poet was a king, and 
the ''lovely blackness the densest of all mysteries" — 
a mother or a sweetheart come to fold him away in 
the arms of love — 

"Oft have I looked in your eyes, Night — 

Night, my Night, with your rich black hair! — 
Looked in your eyes till my face waned white 
And my heart laid hold of a mad delight 
That moaned as I held it there 
Under the deeps of that dark despair — 
Under your rich black hair." 

The night was a great mystery, but there was an- 
other, and that was the poet's inability to account 
for the poem after it was written. When he was asked 
to explain such "poetic fungi," as "Craqueodoom," 
which drew a tide of criticism and inquiry to his desk 
in the Anderson Democrat office, his reply, some 
thought, was as mysterious as the mystery he at- 
tempted to explain : 

I feel that I place myself in rather a peculiar posi- 
tion, (he said, in an open letter in the Democrat). 
However, in doing so, I can but trust to escape the in- 
cessant storm of inquiries hailed so piteously upon me 
since the appearance of the poem — or whatever it is. 

As to its meaning — if it has any — I am as much in 
the dark and as badly worried over its incompre- 
hensibility as any one who may have inflicted himself 
with the reading of it ; in fact, more so, for I have in 
my possession now not less than a dozen of a similar 
character; and when I say they were only composed 
mechanically, without apparent exercise of my 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 323 

thought, I find myself at the threshold of a fact which 
I can not pass. 

I can only surmise that such effusions emanate from 
long and arduous application — a sort of poetic fungus 
that springs from the decay of better effort. It bursts 
into being of itself and in that alone do I find consola- 
tion. 

The process of such composition may furnish a 
curious fact to many, yet I am assured every writer 
of either poetry or music will confirm the experience 
I am about to relate. 

After long labor at verse, you will find there comes 
a time when everything you see or hear, touch, taste 
or smell, resolves itself into rhyme, and rattles away 
till you can not rest. I mean this literally. The 
people you meet upon the streets are so many dis- 
arranged rhymes and only need proper coupling. The 
boulders in the sidewalk are jangled words. The 
crowd of corner loafers is a mangled sonnet with a 
few lines lacking. The farmer and his team an idyl 
of the road, perfected and complete when he stops at 
the picture of a grocery and hitches to an exclamation 
point. 

This is my experience, and at times the effect upon 
both mind and body is exhausting in the extreme. I 
have passed as many as three nights in succession 
without sleep — or at least without mental respite from 
this tireless something v/hich 

"Beats time to nothing in my head 
From some .odd corner of the brain/' 

I walk, I run, I writhe and wrestle with it, but I can 
not shake it off. I lie down to sleep, and all night 
long it haunts me. Whole cantos of incoherent 
rhymes dance before me, and so vividly at last I seem 
to read them as from a book. All this is without will 
power of my own to guide or check : and then occurs 
a stage of repetition — v/hen the matter becomes 



324 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

rhythmically tangible at least, and shapes itself into a 
whole, of sometimes a dozen stanzas, and goes on re- 
peating itself over and over till it is printed indelibly 
in my mind. 

This is the history of the "Craqueodoom." I have 
theorized in vain. I went gravely to a doctor on one 
occasion, and asked him seriously if he did not think 
I was crazy. His laconic reply that he "never saw a 
poet who was not I" is not without consolation. I have 
talked with numerous v/riters regarding my strange 
affliction, and they invariably confirm a like experi- 
ence, only excepting the inability to recall these Gipsy 
changelings of a vagrant mind. 

Very truly, 

J. W. Riley. 

"Call me Little Man," Riley once remarked, "or 
Mr. Clickwad, or any other name you like, but don't 
forget I am 3^our old friend and well-wisher, the Ad- 
justable Lunatic." In the prose sketch of that title he 
is puzzled and bewildered over his compositions. "No 
line of them but canters through his brain like a frac- 
tious nightmare. No syllable but fastens on his fancy 
like a leech, and sucks away the life blood of his very 
thought. He is troubled, worried, fretted, vexed and 
haunted; and hopes wiser minds will have the oppor- 
tunity of making his literary foundlings the subject 
of investigation." 

A luscious bit of verse was, in several respects, as 
miraculous to Riley as apples blushing in orchard trees. 
"Poems grow, you know, like potatoes and other vege- 
tables," he said, "but some of them ripen more slow- 
ly than others, and some have scab on them and decay 
before they are ready to pull." 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 325 

In his later years the mystery about his poems had 
not vanished as seen in the following from Evanston, 
Illinois : 

Dear friend and brother — For such you seem to us 
all, who confess with honest gratitude your ''touch of 
Nature that makes the whole world kin" — my first 
thought on reading the enclosed this morning. We 
all cried as a matter of course. The question was, 
"How James Whitcomb Riley could tell that to the 
world." Maybe you will not feel called to answer it, 
but I send this for your reading all the same, and am 
with thanks for lovely, genial thoughts, 
Your friend sincerely, 

Frances Willard. 

The illustrious woman and her friends had been 
touched by the consoling "Bereaved.'' Never in her 
opinion had the grief of childlessness found such ex- 
pression-— 

"In an empty room she read it; 
As she read it, wept and smiled — • 
She who never was a mother 
Felt within her arms the child." 

She was constrained to believe that such verse 
would last "while this world is a world, and there 
exists in it human souls to kindle at the touch of 
genius, and human hearts to throb with human sym- 
pathies." In this connection she had asked a ques- 
tion the poet could not answer. "I was awakened far 
in the night as by a summons," he told her after- 
ward, "and in seeming answer I arose and the poem 
came trickling through my tears. What it was that 
woke me I can not tell. Was it the pitying gaze of 



326 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

fathers and mothers keeping their lonely vigil through 
the night? Was it the cry of empty arms for the 
touch of vanished fingers? Was it an angel ray of 
light, a celestial petition from the land of dreams and 
sleep? I do not know." 

In the same way about the same time he was sum- 
moned to write "The Poet of the Future." "One 
evening when I had an engagement," he explained, "I 
felt too restless and worn to fulfill it; so I asked my 
friends to excuse me. I went to bed expecting a good 
rest, thinking I should have been there long before. 
I had not had more than a moment's peace when I 
found I could not stay there. I saw something and I 
could no more lie still than I could fly. It was the 
thread of gold— ffis face to heaven, and the dew of 
duty on Ms hroiv — a good line and I knew it. I wrote 
the poem before midnight, and after a week's severe 
revision sent it to the Century/' 

In similar vein the poet gave a clue to the origin of 
the beloved ''Away." The poem occasioned many let- 
ters and newspaper comments. "I was confined to 
my bed," he wrote a friendly editor. *1 was ill and 
weak and all alone. My eyes were inflamed, and so 
I just rolled over and wept with the weather." 

The poem had been written after the death of Gen- 
eral William H. H. Terrell, who, as an aid to Governor 
0. P. Morton, had rendered distinguished service to 
his country in the Civil War. Not less important, in 
Riley's opinion, was the fact that the General gave 
"the sweetest love of his life to simple things." While 
walking in a garden after a shower Riley observed the 
General stoop to pity "a honey-bee wet with rain." 

"I value my poems," Riley once said, "not because 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 327 

they are mine but because they are not." The re- 
mark should not occasion a shock. There was the 
"hammering process/' the "carpenter work," in the 
making of poems, but that did not account for them, 
any more than the night accounted for the light of a 
star. The poet was once told that Henry Ward 
Beecher preached his wonderful sermons while in a 
trance. "True as Gospel," added Riley — "the miracle 
of genius in the pulpit which the preacher himself 
could not explain. When I talk to Lew Wallace I am 
not talking to the author of Ben Hur, That book was 
an inspiration and Wallace was the instrument of the 
inspiration. We say the farmer raised a crop of corn. 
Not at all. He was just an instrument along with a 
host of others for the transmission of the poem to 
the farm, for that is what a cornfield is — a poem. 
Fairies worked with him in the field. Far away in 
the tropics they worked for him all summer. Watery 
particles traveled a thousand miles to contribute to 
his success. Unlike him, the fairies did not rest from 
their labors. While he slept they refreshed the air 
and filled his spring with sparkling water. While he 
plowed, the fairy power of precipitation was at work 
in the clouds on the horizon. What had he to do with 
the shower that drifted to his neighborhood late in 
the afternoon? No, he is not the author of the poem. 
He could not hang a cloud in the sky if he tried a 
million years. Impulses prompt me to write but I am 
not the author of them: 

" 'Nor is it I who play the part. 
But a shy spirit in my heart 
That comes and goes-— will sometimes leap 
From hiding places ten years deep.' " 



328 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

*'One thing, Mr. Riley, I do not understand," a 
young woman once said to him, "and that is where you 
get all the little stories for your poems." He an- 
swered in a vague way, telling her that poets, like 
other folks, had to find their own material and board 
themselves. 

"It would have been no use to tell her," he remarked 
to a friend after she had gone, ''that God made the 
little stories, and that He has given me ability to see 
them a little plainer than some others, and endowed 
me with skill to sketch them so that my readers can 
see them clearly. And I have to be very watchful," 
he added shrewdly, "not to work in too much Riley, 
as that would mar the beauty of the poem." 

Humility and reverence, as he saw it, should be the 
spirit of the poet. Thus Bryant's "Waterfovv^l" be- 
came a favorite poem. There was a Power whose 
care directed his footsteps as it did the flight of the 
bird along a pathless coast. Should the chosen guide, 
as Wordsworth wrote, be nothing but a wandering 
cloud he could not lose his way. 

For a similar reason Newman's "Pillar of Cloud" 
became a favorite hymn. Its ending, Riley regarded 
as the tv/o most poetic lines in hymnology. "Their 
very simplicity," he said, "is divine." Often when 
his path was enveloped in darkness, he prayed for the 
Kindly Light to lead him amid the encircling gloom: 

"Keep thou my feet! I do not ask to see 
The distant scene—one step enough for me." 

"Geographies," said he, "tell about the tides that 
fill bays and estuaries on the coasts of continents. 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 329 

There are other tides. On never-ending ministrations 
of love and delight they flow between heaven and earth 
— those heavenward bearing tidings from earth, those 
earthward bearing tidings from heaven, and the man 
who denies their existence is to be pitied as we pity 
the man far inland, who takes exception to the sea 
tides because their waves do not reach him. Invisible 
messages as • Longfellow shows flow to us on these 
tides, the murmurs of the rapture and woe we call the 
poet's songs. There too is the cry, the transport of 
the departed, seeking happier climes, and 

" 'From their distant flight 
Through realms of light 
It falls into our world of night, 
With the murmuring sound of rhyme.' 

Depend upon it, those promptings from the unknown 
come unbidden, and when they come, all suddenly, the 
poet is transported to an upper realm." 

Referring to the popular poems, ''The Legend Glori- 
fied," "The Harper," "The Pixy People," "The Beauti- 
ful City," and "Her Beautiful Eyes," Riley told a re- 
porter that he "did not make them. God made them," 
said he; "all that I do is to fit the words to them. I 
am a sort of a mental camera, that catches the stories. 
I develop the plate — and there you are. And just 
here I must protest against the opinion of our dear 
Longfellow who claims that it is sheer laziness in a 
poet to refrain from writing because he is not in the 
mood. As I see it, he who attempts to write when 
not in the mood prostitutes his powers. 



330 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

" 'Do not strain the chords of thought ; 
The sweetest fruit of all desire 
Comes its own way, and conies unsought.' 

I never know whether I can write another good thing 
or not — but what am I saying? I never wrote any- 
thing. I found it." 

In Portland, Oregon, a schoolboy asked the poet 
whether he laid any claim to inspiration, and whether 
he was wholly or in part the author of *'A Remarkable 
Man." He assured the lad there were symptoms of 
inspiration. *'The story," he said, "would not be put 
off nor take no for an answer. It simply made me do 
it. It horned itself, you can most truthfully tell your 
teacher — and just like America here when Columbus 
'hopped her up out of the brush.' " 

The poet was touring the Pacific Slope (December, 
1892). To a San Francisco reporter he affirmed that 
a writer, if he has a message for the people, is driven 
to his life-work by an inexorable law. "I wanted to 
be a painter, a musician, an editor, an actor," he said. 
"The Fates said No, and it took rough boxing and 
cudgelling to bring me round to their view. In youth 
your own Bret Harte was lured to this Golden West. 
He wanted to be a miner. Failing in that he tried 
school-teaching, the express business and the news- 
paper office. The Fates had to thump the young man 
twenty years before he saw that his Golden Fleece 
was the Man at the Semaphore, the Fool of Five 
Forks, Jack Hamlin, and the sunset on Black Spur." 

With Riley, disclaiming authorship of a book or a 
poem was not just the whim or privilege of a day or a 
year. It was constitutional. "I am only the reed 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 331 

that the whistle blows through/' was his habitual re- 
mark. The poet's gift, he averred, is "from the 
Creator and should be used by the Creator. The poet 
is the violin from whose soul is lured melody by the 
touch of a master hand/' Booth Tarkington observes 
that Riley "never outgrew his astonishment that he 
happened to be what he was; he was always in sur- 
prise that he, instead of another, had been the reed 
selected by the cosmic musician." Anna Nicholas 
confirms the novelist's observation. "Riley had no 
exalted idea of his ability," she writes; "on the con- 
trary he lacked self-confidence. His literary suc- 
cess, I think, surprised him more than any one else. 
He was immensely pleased of course, and recognition 
in high literary quarters gave him boyish satisfac- 
tion, which he frequently^ expressed; but he did not 
altogether understand it or realize that what he pro- 
duced with such ease and in such perfection was 
through a power above and beyond himself. He did 
not see that it was genius. More than once he said 
to me, half laughing, but still serious : 'It is all a bluff. 
I have them hypnotized.' Riley was a man of moods. 
His writing power was not at his command. He 
wrote when inspiration came." 

Writing Henry Van Dyke after he was fifty, the 
poet said, "I have a book for you, which will find you 
soon. I did not write it, but it is good. Gratefully 
and with all hale affection, your old friend, James 
Whitcomb Riley." 

Whether at home or in foreign lands, his answer 
was always the same. "No," he replied to a reporter 
in the city of Mexico, "I can not say whether I shall 
write a poem on this tropic land. I never can tell in 



332 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

advance about what my poetry is to be. I wait for 
the spirit to move me/' And often according to his 
own testimony he had to wait a long while. *'You 
did not amount to much over here/' said an old resi- 
dent of Greenfield ; ^ Ve never thought you would come 
to the front the way you have ; we hear you get a dol- 
lar a word for your poems." "Yes," returned Riley, 
*'but there are days when I can not think of a single 
word. Simply, the winds," he explained to his old 
neighbor, "would not blow." 

Though he hung out every rag he could find to the 
scanty breeze, the barge moved sluggishly. It was 
like his voyage across the Atlantic: Tuesday and 
Wednesday, inspiring — weather soft, warm and 
beautiful. He was near the Gulf Stream. Thursday 
and Friday, seaweed — ^just rain and gloom, and then 
gloom and rain. 

The opinion of masters on the subject were uncom- 
monly interesting to Riley. "Who," wrote Elbert 
Hubbard, "taught Abraham Lincoln and Whitcomb 
Riley how to throw the lariat of their imagination 
over us, rope us hand and foot, and put their brand 
upon us? Yes, that is what I mean — ^who educated 
them? God educated them." 

"Whose hand smote the lyre of the Scottish Plow- 
man?" asked Henry Watterson. "I don't know." 

"No man knows," continued Riley; "you can no 
more explain Burns than you can explain the dew on 
the meadow." He went on to describe a man, unlet- 
tered and poor, living in a hut with scarcely enough 
money from week to week to pay for candlelight. He 
was a poet, but institutions of culture did not believe 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 333 

it. In some way, a mystery to him as to them, he was 
commissioned of the Unseen to write lyrics. 

Always there was the mystery that so many writers, 
Joel Chandler Harris, Bret Harte, Mark Twain and 
others, were not college men. In this connection, the 
historian, John Clark Ridpath wrote as follows, in 
1892: "James Whitcomb Riley has had the good 
fortune to become what he was born to be — the poet 
of the human heart. It might be difficult to find an- 
other man of Riley's age, belonging to the intellectual 
classes, who bears about with him so little of that 
commodity which the bookmen and teachers label edu- 
cation. I sorrow to inform the public that of mathe- 
matics and geography, science and the like, our poet 
has none at all. He is in this respect as poverty- 
stricken as Shakespeare was in the little matter of 
Greek. With grief I divulge the fact that to this day 
Riley does not formally know a nominative from an 
objective ! It is doubtless true that his school-life was 
a total failure — and so much the better. For it is per- 
fectly clear, in the retrospect, that the formalities of 
a graded and high school would have confused, and 
perhaps obscured, what has proved to be the most pro- 
ductive genius of the Mississippi Valley." 

In conversation Riley was prone to the use of ex- 
travagant figures, when trying to make inspiration 
intelligible, but he usually ended with the confession 
that he could not find the key, that with words it was 
impossible to shed light upon it. Why should he, an 
uncouth youth in a country town, without a glimpse 
of college life, with no knowledge from books of the 
laws of versification, syntax as obscure as the origin 



334 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

of man, figures of rhetoric a tanglewood of riddles, 
iambic measures and heroic couplets as unintelligible 
as hallelujah meters — why should he be the instru- 
ment? 

From first to last Riley was radiant with gratitude 
when he could come from his study with the good word 
that the Seraph had drifted through his dreams and 
filled the chancels of his soul with heavenly whisper- 
ings. At noon after his work at night, he would tell 
of melodious refrains with which he had been 
entranced in his sleep. "Everything I write," he 
wrote James Newton Matthews, * 'seems to me as if I 
had simply found it and had no right to it — that is, 
with the present ownership of the thing, and I don't 
think I have. It is exactly on the principle of the 
dreams I have had — dreams that were mine undeni- 
ably, but I in no wise responsible for their mental 
construction — therefore with no right to claim any of 
their excellence in that particular, an excellence some- 
times extraordinary. In dreams I have built pages 
and pages of marvelous verse that floated beforeH:he 
mental vision as smooth and pure and lucid as the 
clearest print — verse that charmed the author at times 
with excellently molded sentences of purest poetry, 
that he dwelt upon and extolled and read again and 
again. All that is the dream's composition and the 
poet did not write a line of it and can not claim it, 
can not claim it at least when he wakes in the morning, 

"Like a drowsy boy that lingers 

With a dream of pleasure rare, 
And wakens with his fingers 
Grasping only empty air. 



THE UNFAILING MYSTERY 335 

'That is my theory, and I am only proud because I 
have found the poem. I found one this afternoon, 
*A Glimpse of Pan,' and it has tickled me half to 
death, and I am going to copy it for you and go to 
bed." 

Writing the gifted Madison Cawein, he said, **Your 
genius has my profoundest admiration. In this en- 
dowment God himself is manifest in you — and hence 
with what divine humility must you combat the Evil 
One, and with what care guard the great truth from 
any touch too merely human. Give nothing to it but 
pure joy, and beauty, and compassion, and tenderness : 
a Christ-like laying on of hands on brows that ache 
and wounds that bleed, fainting from pain, and worn 
and weary." 

'^Everybody's learning all the time," Riley was wont 
to say. "Never any venture of my life was any more 
than a trial at some attainment — an experiment — not 
a forecast certainty of accomplishment. The fact is, 
keeps me duly humble, and ought to. Whatever good 
is wrought is not our doing — it is through us, not of 
us. And that is what God wants to beat in us, and 
when we just won't have it so, why, then He lets loose 
of us that we may see, and the whole united populace 
as well, that here is another weighed-and-found-want- 
ing candidate for enduring glory." 

Ascending the scale, there was in the invisible 
around him a melody born of Melody, which as Emer- 
son had said, melts the visible world into a sea. In 
that world of mystery and miracle there was no 
gradation. All was music. The poet's function was 
to record the "primal warblings." The sorrow of 
sorrows was that he could never wholly fling himself 



336 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

into the enchanted circle, never wholly surrender his 
will to the Universal Power. 

According to Riley the poet was not a poet until he 
was in tune with the Infinite Melody. Indeed, he went 
so far as to say that, in the poetic sense, the poet was 
not a man. He himself was not a man when not 
poetic in thought and spirit. The '^primal warblings" 
were not his handiwork. They were beyond the 
height or effort of art. They were the gift of God. 
'That they ravish the heart of an inferior man like 
me," he said, "is evidence that God intends them for 
the whole of mankind." 



CHAPTER XIX 
BUILDING BOOKS 

BETWEEN the Rhymes of Childhood (1890) and 
The Book of Joyous Children (1902) lay the 
period of book building, — "my appeal to the 
appreciative majority," he expressed it, — "not the 
effort to tickle the ears of a half dozen cynics in the 
front row." Insistent was the call — ^and he answered 
it. Books should speak for him. "A new book?" an 
old Greenfield friend would ask. "I hope so," Riley 
would reply. "This old home atmosphere is worth 
preserving; it is passing quickly away and will soon 
be gone." 

While he was on the road in the 'eighties he had not 
given to his books the personal attention they de- 
served. In 1890 when new plates were made for the 
revised Pipes o* Pan and Afterwhiles his book decade 
may be said to have begun. Annually after that his 
audience expected a new volume. "I am a very busy 
man," he remarked to an Omaha reporter in 1897, 
"but there must be some mistake about it for I was 
never inclined to be industrious. You have no idea 
how lazy I can be. You see I am more or less jealous 
of my reputation. Years ago I made a scratch hit 
with a little book and since then I have been trying 
to keep people thinking they were right in their first 
judgment." 

"Printers are snowing me under with proofs," he 
wrote Madison Cawein, "and my intellect, such as it 

337 



338 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

is, is tottering on its kinky-springed and lumpily-up- 
holstered throne. Actually I have a bank account. I 
not only publish a book but get something out of it, 
and — when my brother-in-law looks after the proceeds 
— I hold on to some of them. It means that I was 
made to do the monkeyshines — not to take in the gate 
money and flop it down on the table and hold it there." 

"It is comforting to know you are not dead yet," he 
wrote a friend in Nebraska (November, 1890). "God 
bless and keep you in the earthly ranks till I drop out 
anyhow! Just now I am given over wholly to the 
book-habit. They are multiplying by litters, like 
white mice! There is such a demand in fact that I 
fear to turn away — lest m.y luck let up and flop over 
and die on the flat of its back. My best prayers are 
with you always. Not in my prosperity is any friend 
forgot — ^the poorest one of all is my superior, whether 
in Congress or in jail." 

A month later he wrote Ras Wilson, the Quiet Ob- 
server of the Pittsburgh Gazette, and one of the poet's 
most loyal friends: 

December 29, 1890. 
Dear friend Wilson: 

By this time I know you are beginning to suspect 
me not only of neglect but base ingratitude, but 
neither am I guilty of, in the least. Simply the 
Christmas season has been here — and so have I. 

Ah, my dear man! how I bless you for your treat- 
ment of Rhymes of Childhood, and how I want to 
show you letters from the most exacting of the 
Nation's literary celebrities indorsing virtually your 
every word of commendation and welcome. Truly the 
venture is a great "go" — and up to date the pressmen 
and the binders can't keep up with the demand. This, 



BUILDING BOOKS 339 

too, seems to have roused up an older interest, so that, 
shoulder to shoulder, my earlier books are swept clean 
out of market, and newer thousands of them are again 
being ground out of the great literary sausage ma- 
chine. 

As ever your grateful friend, 

J. W. Riley. 

Again and again he declined flattering lecture 
invitations. As Agassiz had said, he could not waste 
his time in money-making. In 1892 he requested a 
magazine editor to return promptly all unprinted 
poems. "I must shift for 'em right away," he wrote. 
"Am gittin' oldish-like and must be a-humpin* 'fore 
rumatiz sets in." Five years later he was still busy 
but considerably the worse for the wear and tear. 

April 16, 1897. 
Dr. William C. Cooper (of Cleves, Ohio). 
Dear old friend: 

Your most heartening poem is simply getting 
hugged. Don't know how to control my feelings in 
anything like decorum when all at once called upon 
to face so generous a tribute. Can't you send a little 
homeopathic poet your formula? I've got patients, 
and fees, all waiting, but I'm clean run out of the 
curative essence, so to speak. God gives nuts to 
those who have no teeth, you know, and now that my 
poetry is over-besought and over-valued I could not 
apprehend a rhyme for dove without a bench warrant ! 
As always your affectionate Jamesie. 

August 17, 1897. 
W. C. Edgar, Esq., Minneapolis. 
Dear Mr. Edgar: 

It is good of you to invite still another contribution 
from me, but alas, I fear you have *'come to a goat's 
house for wool." I don't believe Pinkerton could find, 



340 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

iiist now, another rhyme in my entire anatomy. 
Otherwise most gladly would I do my level-best for 
you. Have just finished a new book, and must lie 
down somewhere in the shade and pant. 
As ever your friend, 

James Whitcomb Riley. 

After his prime, in what he jokingly called "the 
venerable and time-honored epoch" of his career, Riley 
repeatedly referred to himself as the "homeopathic 
poet." His friends did not know what he meant, but 
there was no doubt in his own mind. It was anxiety 
over his vanishing youth. "The comb begins to pull," 
he said once while revising poems for a new volume. 
"There is molasses in my ambrosial curls. Not half 
so much fun to run a lawn mower the last ten minutes 
as when you first take hold of the machine." 

As the sales of his books grew, grew beyond his 
wildest fancy, he was beset by soft temptations, such 
as ease and wealth. He realized that a subtle indolence 
was stealing over him. Like Burdette he had reached 
the age when he exaggerated difficulties. "Proofs of 
the book began to arrive Saturday," Burdette wrote in 
1897, referring to one of his own volumes. "As I 
read it, you know how I wish I had said it this way; 
then sleep on it and decide to leave it as it was, then 
change it back; then get disgusted with the whole 
thing; finally decide not to publish the book; then 
think I might do it under a nom de plume so that no- 
body would know who wrote the truck; and at last in 
desperation let it go back to the publisher, saying. 
Dumb the difference, let it go." 

And it was thus with Riley as he grew older. Poems 
were sent to magazines and occasionally a book slipped 



BUILDING BOOKS 341 

from his study without receiving the attention that 
he had given his work in former years. And so he 
became a target for the critic. "He has bound the 
poems together in a book," wrote one, — "the pebbles 
and the pearls on one string, and the author seems to 
have perverse affection for the pebbles." 

For many years Riley aspired to build a book (to 
use his own language) as a mason would construct a 
stone wall, a book that would stand true from the first 
and need no rebuilding. He never realized that 
dream. To the last, portions of the wall, and once 
the whole structure had to be torn down and rebuilt. 

Riley was an indefatigable worker. "Simply it is 
not my fate," he wrote Major Charles Holstein, "ever 
to have any real genuine rest or leisure in this world. 
I have been noticing this fatality for many a long 
year; and while you may smile at this *fool-fancy' of 
mine, as it is generally believed to be, none the less I 
know it is most unwavering and relentless fact. In 
present instance it is coming in the form of setting me 
straight on with still another book — ^the beginning of 
which, thank God! and outline, has been compassed 
long ago, so that all that remains of the task is the 
filling in. And since I am in the spirit and frame of 
mind, I feel I must do it now, though it will cost me 
all the interval allowed me for the Holidays. But my 
health and heroism are both equal to it, and so I square 
my jaws. Simply I just am not going to fight fate 
any more — nor am I going to be ungrateful for my 
seeming trials and deprivations. They are all bless- 
ings in disguise. Has not some old poet-saint assev- 
erated, under oath two or three hundred years ago, 
that 



342 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

" 'The clouds we so much dread 

Are big with mercy and will break 
In blessings on our head'? 

Anyway I am going cheerfully to take his word for it ; 
and right here and now and straight onward till the 
book is done, accept the blessed inevitable." 

Working at night he kept his secretary awake with 
such remarks as these : 

"A man of average endowment could write books if 
he would work at it as hard as the author does. There 
are a thousand and one things to consider. For in- 
stance, there is the title — keep both ears and eyes open 
— would it have been a good title five years ago — will 
it be a good title ten years hence ? It does not require 
much to write a book, but to name the thing, that 
takes genius — ^many a title has made a book successful 
— I could do a good business creating titles — ^the editor 
wanted to change the title; I told him I would have 
the manuscript returned before I would change it. 

"What a fearful thing it is to be the writer of a 
bad book, Myron Reed used to tell me. The author is 
dead and sorry but what good does sorrow do? The 
book is loose. It is like poisoning the neighborhood 
well. 

'In launching a book consider the difficulties and 
dangers attending its voyage. Whether on sea or on 
shore, said the old Tales of the Ocean, keep a good 
lookout ahead. An old sea captain maintained that a 
man has no manly motive for facing dangers unless he 
has v/ell considered what they are. That done, let the 
author commit himself and his book to the Higher 
Powers. 



BUILDING BOOKS 843 

"Here is a flaw for us to whet our beaks upon. If 
I were to go through these galleys forty years hence I 
would find corrections to make. What labor it takes 
to make a tolerable book, and how little the reader 
knows about that. How wide awake a man must be 
to judge quietly and wisely of merits and defects. 

"I get some things by reflection. I have considered 
this book from every standpoint. I know what I 
think of the book. I know what the critics think of 
it. I know what my relatives think of it. I know 
the opinion of good men and the man with a disease. 
I know what the halt and the lame and the blind think 
of it. I know the opinions of all these before they 
have seen the book. 

"Why go on writing this rubbish? something seems 
to say. Have I lost the power of invention? I shall 
not sleep to-night — the book haunts me like a ghost. 
I could no more forget it than Lincoln could forget 
his slaves." 

Thus the poet talked while he worked, wide-awake 
as he approached the dawn, while the secretary re- 
pressed the heaviness of sleep. 

A barrier to bookmaking was the poef s inability 
to decide things. At times this infirmity would block 
proceedings for days. An instance was his disposition 
of "The Old Settler's Story." It was a favorite sketch, 
the scaffolding for it having come from an old Uncle 
Tommy at the Oakland Pioneer Meeting in 1878. Its 
conclusion gave him especial pleasure, "since," he 
said, "it wrote itself." 

But what to do with the story after it had been 
created — there was the rub. Ten years later it ap- 
peared in Pipes o* Pan, Twenty years after, it was 



344 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

transferred to Neghboriy Poems, "and the Lord only 
knows what I would do with it," said Riley, ^'should 
I return some day to make a call on posterity." 

The summer season was the poet's favorite time for 
bookmaking. "I am always cold in winter," he said. 
"Having a very thin skin and only about two ounces 
of blood in my system and that in a very thin state, 
I feel the cold all the time. When at home in the 
summer and hard at work on a book while others are 
at the seashore, striving for enjoyment, I am comfort- 
able. I can enjoy life as well as the rest if I can only 
work while the perspiration is rolling down my brow 
and I am glowing generally." 

When interviewed, the poet often remarked that he 
was not a literary man, yet he freely expressed him- 
self on questions of literature. He said things about 
"the damphool author," and they were usually caustic. 
He was not seriously alarmed over what seemed to be 
the degeneration of the public taste, the delight of the 
masses in light, faddish books, the belief that com- 
mercialism was having a baneful influence, and so 
forth. The masses might wabble but the people make 
literature; ultimately they were bound to be right. 
The author should study to please and benefit them — 
that is what he writes for. Often an author writes 
his first book to please himself — mistake number one. 
Then he writes a book to please the critics, the fellows 
that had jumped on his first book — mistake number 
two. Then the author, if he is discerning, writes a 
book to please the masses, and he finds favor with the 
public. But he can not do that unless he mingles 
with the people and finds out what they want. He 
can not do it by standing aloof; he can not do it by 



BUILDING BOOKS 345 

getting "chesty." The writer must not be too good 
for human nature and human provender. He must 
live with the people to be a leader of the people. 

Occasionally there was a call from the masses, which 
he answered reluctantly. An instance was his sonnet, 
"The Assassin," written after the death of President 
Garfield. "It was prompted I suppose by fire or 
brimstone," he said, "for I remember, in making an 
illustration for it, that I chewed the end of a match, 
dipped it in ink, and made plumes of smoke rising 
from the field of retribution, as if the elements were 
breathing out vengeance with Justice. But it was 
unlike me to write it, although there was a popular 
call for it. I remember that I delayed sending it to 
the Journal, Always I have been distinctly ashamed 
of it." 

After Rhymes of Childhood, the poet, with rare ex- 
ceptions, appeared in book form yearly to the end of 
his publication period. His publishers, then the 
Bowen-Merrill Company, now the Bobbs-Merrill Com- 
pany of Indianapolis, continued their old-time fealty. 
As Riley put it, they kept the ball rolling till his glad 
day came "v/id de blowin' er de bugles and de bangin' 
er de drums." In order of time the volumes were 
Neghborly Poems, Sketches in Prose, Flying Islands 
of the Night, Green Fields and Running Brooks, 
Armazindy, Poems Here at Home,, A Child-World, 
Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers, Home-Folks, The Book of Joy- 
ous Children, His Pa's Romance, and Morning. In 
1897 the Homestead Edition, sold by subscription only, 
was published, through arrangements with the Bobbs- 
Merrill Company, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Later 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company published the Biography 



346 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ical Edition and still later the Memorial Edition, the 
complete set of the poet's works in ten volumes. 
Poems Here at Home, and The Rubaiyat of Doc 
Sifers were originally published by the Century Com- 
pany. 

The initial poem in Armazindy, illustrated by Will 
Vawter in the Indianapolis Journal, September, 1893, 
marks the beginning of the poet's good fortune with 
his artist, whose illustrations have been coextensive 
with the poet's fame. The pictures not only relate to 
the text but illuminate it, which can not be said of 
some illustrations by other artists. Like the poet, 
Vawter was reared in Greenfield. He knows the value 
of sunshine and rainy days, and the lesson of homely, 
human sorrows. ''Simply you are divinely ordained 
to succeed," Riley wrote him at an early day. "As I 
forecast so you must prove,'* The artist did succeed. 
His pictures are redolent with the good old-fashioned 
days and ways ; he has the heart-touch. 

The end of the 'nineties marked the beginning of a 
series of illustrated books, which were received enthu- 
siastically by the book trade and the Riley public. 
Years before, Afterwhiles and Rhymes of Childhood 
had established the reputation of the poet; so that it 
may be said that magazine attention to Riley and 
magazine publication of his poems followed, for the 
most part, the reception of his books. The milestones 
in his popularity were marked by the appearance 
of the illustrated books — Child Rhymes and Farm 
Rhymes and others in the Deer Creek volumes illus- 
trated by Vawter, the crowning success being An Old 
Sweetheart of Mine in 1902, illustrated by Howard 
Chandler Christy. This had a tremendous vogue and 




The Poet in 1896 




At the Hancock County Fair, 1865, a Memory of Early Days in 
THE Poet's Child-World 



BUILDING BOOKS 347 

was followed with equal success by Out to Old Aunt 
Mary's, Home Agnin with Me, The Girl I Loved, and 
other titles in the Christy-Riley series. 

No mention of the illustrated books should be made, 
no matter how brief, without a special word of praise 
for the Franklin Booth Edition of The Flying Islands 
of the Night Mr. Booth's paintings, in originality of 
conception and beauty of color, rank with any similar 
work ever done in this country, and did much to bring 
this never fully appreciated poem to the better atten- 
tion of Riley admirers. 

The success of the illustrated books verified the 
faith of the publishers in the poet and his work. At 
an early date the president of the organization, Wil- 
liam C. Bobbs, then one of the company's salesmen, 
had found the poet's first little volume in a corner 
book store at Liberty, Indiana, and had predicted for 
him and his poems a glorious future. That was the 
day of small things. The illustrated works, due chiefly 
to the unfailing faith and efl^orts of the publishing 
house, distinguished the day of prosperity. 

In the early book ventures Dan Paine's counsel was 
always available. He was aware of what many other 
friends were not, that Riley had written great poems 
in his youth. "Lyric poets," he afl^rmed, "do their 
greatest work before they are thirty-five." Repeat- 
edly, when Riley was preparing book manuscripts 
Paine pointed with pride to the past. "Back there in 
your dreamy days," he once said, "are 'Dot Leedle 
Boy' — *A Country Pathway'^ — 'Farmer Whipple' — 
'Tom Van Arden' — 'August' — 'The Iron Horse' — 
'Watches of the Night'— 'Her Beautiful Eyes'— and 
other country paper favorites. Roll them up in 



348 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

dreams together and make a book.'* Riley did so, and 
thus Green Fields and Running Brooks began its pil- 
grimage to family bookshelves. 

Each book had its own story, — ^joys, difficulties, and 
provocations attending its construction. What befell 
while the poet worked on A Child-World suggests his 
experience with other volumes. "The book is round- 
ing into completion, and very soon I shall hand it to 
the printers," he wrote Frank M. Nye of Minneapolis. 
"Meanwhile I am whettin' my hind feet on the gravel 
of the sidewalk till printers change my line of servi- 
tude by snowing me under with proof sheets." Later, 
followed this letter to Louise Chandler Moulton of 
Boston : 

Indianapolis, August 18, 1896. 
My dear friend: 

This long silence goes out to you, even as a long 
captive songster's — free once more in his native wood- 
land haunts, with his rapturous breast again safe in 
the shadow of the leaves, and his grateful beak song- 
wide with his first inspiration. 

The occasion of my wide-spread delinquency is, of 
course, another book — which same headstrong thing 
has insisted upon rhyming, chiming and subliming 
itself to the other side of 200 pages. And here, seeing 
it at last in type, I'm wondering, thus belatedly, who 
else'll want to wade so vast a width of all unbroken 
verse. And will you venture, sailor-like, across it 
when I send you first copy of it? 

As always your grateful and abiding friend, 

James Whitcomb Riley. 

The characters in A Child-World were real char- 
acters, the scenes typical scenes of the early day and 
locality. "Exactly that," said Riley, "but something 



BUILDING BOOKS 349 

more than that. The characters are people that I 
knew when a child. Several stories were real stories 
told by children of that day. The book appeals to me, 
because of its simplicity. We had comparatively little 
opportunity for entertainment in my town in those 
days; all we had we had to make first-hand. Nor 
was this a bad thing, this limited environment, and 
even a fair acquaintance with poverty, for it makes 
people self-reliant and keeps them always kindly and 
most cheer ingly sympathetic." 

The book contained the popular "Bear Story," which 
had originated with the poet's little brother, Humboldt 
Riley. "It was his creation, his one lone masterpiece 
in fiction," said the poet; ''he told it so many times, 
while we children sat round the fireside, that he came 
to believe it and could see no inconsistencies in it. 
On my first trip away from home (with the Standard 
Remedy vendor) I reproduced it, thinking it might 
be acceptable for a Christmas entertainment when I 
should get back home. So it turned out to be. Later 
it appeared to be pleasing to audiences generally, 
especially to children, and when I wanted to retire it 
I could not. So I incorporated it permanently in my 
reading programs." 

On the whole Riley had been happy while working 
on this new volume. He had been in his world — had 
been seeking the pictures that hung on the walls of 
his fancy in his barefoot days. It had been his habit 
to sleep with childhood books under his pillow. One 
night while at work on The Book of Joyous Children 
he recalled the scene in Dickens' story of the Golden 
Mary, the little band of passengers adrift in the long- 
boat on the wide ocean, and the lamentation of the old 



350 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

man who pinned his faith to the child. "Our sins 
will sink us/* Riley repeated; "we shall founder and 
go to the devil when we have no innocent child to bear 
us up." There might be fair mornings and broad 
fields of sunlight on the waves, but without the love 
and innocence of children the voyage of life would be 
in vain. In all his books there were pages for the 
children. Half of Armazindy was given over to 
"Make-Believe and Child-Play/' ending with the little 
"Envoy'*— 

"When but a little boy, it seemed 

My dearest rapture ran 
In fancy ever, when I dreamed 
I was a man — a man! 

**Now — sad perversity! — ^my theme 

Of rarest, purest joy 
Is when, in fancy blest, I dream 
I am a little boy." 

Simultaneously with its appearance in America, A 
Child^World was published in London. The Riley 
audience had been growing in England since the ad- 
vent of Afterwhiles, but chiefly since his visit to "a 
bright little island," as he spoke of it to English 
friends, "a show-fight little island, and full of merit 
of all sorts, but not the whole round world." British- 
ers had been pleased with his frankness as well as 
with his verse. 

Years before, while on the road with Nye, the book 
business had seemed like a leap in the dark. A Lon- 
don publisher had asked why he did not put the sale 
of his books in the hands of somebody in England who 



BUILDING BOOKS 351 

would push them properly. "Simply/* the poet 
answered, ^'because time out of mind the author is in 
the hands of his publisher and his publisher is in the 
hands of the Devil. Hundreds of would-be consumers 
of my books go hungry along with me simply because 
one publisher will not publish them and another will. 
At least that's the way it appears to a man up a tree. 
My sympathy drifts ever to the intrepid firm here in 
America that print my books, knowing no other house 
in the world will so courteously handle them. My 
publishers here, are year after year bravely bringing 
out another volume *by the same author' and plugging 
along as best they can — learning to labor and to wait." 

Much more confident was the tone of his letters the 
year he published A Child-World. Prior to that date 
he had sent by request a set of his books to Charles A. 
Dana, his old-time sponsor and ally of the New York 
Sun, The Sun had given the poet a full-page review. 
**Here evidently is a man," said the reviewer, "who 
would have felt the impulse to speak tunefully and to 
touch the springs of humor and pathos had he lived 
before the invention of alphabets. In the absence of 
books, the lessons to be drawn from nature and from 
human life would have sufficed. With his own hands 
he has garnered his knowledge of the outer and of the 
inner world." 

The editor himself however had been to the poet the 
chief source of delight in a personal letter dated 



The Sun, New York, March 15, 1894. 
Dear Mr. Riley: 

By some accident through which the package was 
misplaced in this office, it is only to-day that I have 



352 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

received the set of your works sent to me on the 24th 
ult. But I do not receive them with any less pleasure 
on that account; and I am especially delighted with 
the beautiful binding which forms an outward decora- 
tion for the genius of the contents. I congratulate 
you most heartily in a literary success which has had 
no parallel in my day ; and I remain as ever, 

Most sincerely and faithfully yours, 
Charles A. Dana. 

With the passing of the years came many letters 
from England, one from the author of Beside the 
Bonnie Brier Bush, which Riley said gladdened the 
heart as orchard bloom in May. 

Sefton Park Church, Liverpool. 
17 Croxteth Road, 
8th October, 1900. 
Dear Whitcomb Riley: 

My return to work this autumn was made delight- 
ful and the sorrow of a countryman in leaving wood 
and water for the City was lifted by the delight of 
finding your works upon my table and reading your 
name in each volume. 

Many an evening this winter after the drudgery of 
the day is over I will go where the snow is lying pure 
upon the hills and see the Glen again at the touch of a 
fairy wand. And amid the drudgery the beautiful 
and tender thoughts of one of America's truest poets 
will visit my heart. 

Believe me, with every sentiment of admiration and 
regard, 

Yours faithfully, 

John Watson. 



CHAPTER XX 

A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 

AS to patriotism the poet felt "the glory and 
might of his country throbbing in every pulsa- 
tion of his heart." He wsiS an ardent lover 
of his country and a firm believer in its future. Few 
things gave him more pleasure than to participate in 
some patriotic exercises, but in so doing he never 
sought a prominent place. Let the statesmen, the 
orators and the v^arriors sit in the front row. He, 
as he phrased it at the Army of the Tennessee Ban- 
quet, was "an humble citizen, a mere civilian," con- 
tent to contribute his mite in a modest manner. 
Nevertheless, if applause is a measure of merit, it 
turned out many times that his performance was the 
most conspicuous feature on the program. 

His patriotic fervor originated in the dark days of 
his country's progress, days now rich in memory, as 
he was fond of saying; days when no one knew 
whether the Union would survive, the "days when the 
Old Band swept musically to the front," he said, "and 
I read A Man without a Country.'* 

"I learned my lesson between the fall of Sumter 
and the fall of Richmond," he continued. "My school 
of instruction was a series of happenings in my native 
town." Quaintly he undervalued the place — 

353 



354 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

''A little old town in the days long done 
Of Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-One, 
In the April lull of a storm that burst — 
Launched on the flag at Sumter first : 
A little old town of the days long done, 
When the shoe-shop, tavern, and store were one; 
And the one 'town hall' was the ware-room, where 
The Band-Boys met and the dances w^ere: 
A little old town where the stranger found 
Little of welcome waiting round — 
Especially were his business known 
As confined to himself alone/* 

"Our little town, like every other village and every 
metropolis throughout the country at that time," he 
wrote in his sketch, "Mary Alice Smith," "was, to the 
children at least, a scene of continuous holiday and 
carnival. The nation's heart was palpitating with 
the feverish pulse of w^ar, and already the still half- 
frozen clods of the common highway were beaten into 
frosty dust by the tread of marshalled men, and the 
shrill shriek of the fife, and the hoarse boom and jar 
and rattling patter of the drums stirred every breast 
with something of that rapturous insanity of which 
true patriots and heroes are made." 

In those days he learned and listened to wondrous 
words, he said, that had the sound of wind and the 
voice of waters— and sometimes, boy though he was, 
he repeated these wondrous words. Early residents 
of Greenfield recall a recruiting day when, in response 
to requests, he mounted a goods box in the street and 
recited "Sheridan's Ride." "While listening," said a 
survivor of that time, "we heard the echoes of angry 
guns far away, and when the youth had finished, men 
fell over each other to enlist for the war." 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 355 

The youth was not a soldier, but he could chant the 
praises of valor, and, when older, could sing of the 
soldier in "The Name of Old Glory," and eloquently 
recite it, as he did at the dedication of monuments on 
the Shiloh battle-field and elsewhere. Once in his 
famous days, a weekly paper printed one of his mar- 
tial poems. *'The poem shows," wrote the editor in 
his comment, "that the poet in the hour of his country's 
need, would shoulder the musket and march to the 
front." "The editor did not know," added Riley, 
"that at the first shot of a picket the poet would run 
like a reindeer." 

In the closing days of the war, scarcely had the 
fires of one demonstration died out in Greenfield when 
they were kindled for another. One Saturday after- 
noon in April there was a Grand Mass Meeting — Rich- 
mond had fallen — ending at night with bonfires in the 
street and a "monster conflagration" on the common, 
and "a Grand Hop by our patriotic ladies" in anticipa- 
tion of the boys' return from the battle-plains of the 
South. Memories of the "conflagration" Riley after- 
ward incorporated in an unpublished story. To the 
end of his career he could ever hear the swelling 
chorus of the village bells — and the men hurrying 
through the streets, their long black shadows chasing 
them toward the fire — how the wind whooped and 
moaned and stroked and caressed with its wavy hand, 
the long yellow tresses of flame — and how it lashed 
them into mad furious bursts of passion that like dis- 
torted serpents sullenly died away in trailing columns 
of smoke. 

Swiftly following the surrender of Richmond came 
the news from Appomattox Court House. "The trans- 



356 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

port in Greenfield the morning after Lee's surrender," 
said Riley, ^'touched the borders of lawlessness." 
With boyish glee he itemized "ingredients of the con- 
fusion" — cider barrels brought from cellars and 
opened on the sidewalks — a little whisky mixed with 
the cider — dippers for each barrel — old wagons and 
drays full of men who were full of cider, drawn to 
and fro through the street — hats riddled with bullets 
when thrown in the air — ^young women lifted to tables 
and goods boxes to sing "Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are 
Marching" — ^the prankish crowd catching the im- 
promptu spirit of the carnival, wildly screaming and 
leaping and singing in chorus — such was the scene the 
poet remembered. In the absence of order, there was 
considerable inconvenience occasioned by revelers 
loading firearms and shooting paper wads into the 
populace. Referring to a citizen thus disabled, Riley 
said, "We picked war news out of his leg for a 
week." 

Always in military as well as civic matters the poet 
espoused the cause of the rank and file. Their faith, 
fortitude, and all-absorbing love of country, — ^what 
were a nation without them? "Great soldiery, great 
oratory," he once remarked, referring to the eloquence 
of Robert Ingersoll at Indianapolis in 1876; "it was 
the Grand Army men around the speaker, wildly wav- 
ing their hats in the rain, that made the oration pos- 
sible." 

Always the soldier was an inspiring presence. It 
mattered not that some were listed among the missing 
and the dead. Wherever there was a reunion of 
veterans, the absent were there. Through a period 
of forty years he was again and again privileged to 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 357 

see the ''great remnant" of Indiana's 250,000 soldier 
boys march around Monument Place, Indianapolis, in 
commemoration of some heroic event. Always it 
seemed to Riley that shoulder-to-shoulder with those 
who marched were the spirits of those "whose dust 
we have covered with flowers,'' and in his latter years, 
the invisible army trooping through the streets vastly 
outnumbered the visible. Of the invisible army he 
sang in "Soldiers Here To-Day" — 

"Soldiers and saviors of the homes we love; 
Heroes and patriots who marched away, 
And who marched back, and who marched on above^ — 
All — all are here to-day! 

"Here — by the stars that bloom in fields of blue, 
And by the bird above with shielding wings ; 
And by the flag that floats out over you, 
With silken beckonings — 

"In fancy all are here. The night is o'er. 

And through dissolving mists the morning gleams ; 
And clustered round their hearths we see once more 
The heroes of our dreams. 

"A bloom of happiness in every cheek — 

A thrill of tingling joy in every vein — 
In every soul a rapture they will seek 
In Heaven, and find again!" 

On many historic occasions in his elderly days, the 
poet read original poems — tributes to presidents and 
the commanders of armies, such as "The Home Voy- 
age" at the unveiling of the Henry W. Lawton statue 
in Indianapolis, and "William McKinley" at the dedi- 
cation of the McKinley Memorial at Canton, Ohio. On 
each occasion President Roosevelt was the orator of 



358 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the day, both president and poet spoke to immense 
throngs, and both were greeted with mighty cheers. 
Great as these and like occasions were, the poems 
composed for them did not measure up to the heights 
of the poet's genius when his heart w^as on fire and 
the plain soldier was his theme. 

Sympathizing with the man in the ranks, it was 
quite fitting that the poet should respond to the toast, 
*'The Common Patriot," at the banquet of the Society 
of the Army of the Tennessee, in Chicago, Thursday 
night, October 8, 1891 — all in all, the most significant 
effort of his life, on a patriotic program. 

For two days the city had been a living panorama 
of patriotic fervor. Wednesday, the poet's birthday, 
one of the most imposing pageants ever seen in the 
West had passed through the city's streets. In the 
afternoon, one hundred thousand people had witnessed 
in Lincoln Park the unveiling of the heroic statue of 
General Grant, one of the largest equestrian castings 
ever made in America. "Like a Giant Hero in the 
Sky," the poet remarked after the unveiling, "it stands 
with face toward the morning." 

The banquet, in the "spacious dining hall" of the 
Palmer House, was the grand finale to the two-days' 
celebration, "the largest course-dinner," it was said, 
"ever given in Chicago." The feast of eloquence 
rivaled that in the never-to-be-forgotten banquet given 
to the "Old Commander" in the same city, on his re- 
turn from his trip around the world. The very titles 
of the toasts added luster to the occasion : 

"General Ulysses S. Grant" Horace Porter 

"Let Us Have Peace" Henry Watterson 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 359 

"The Press in the War for the Union"__Joseph Medill 

''The Common Patriot" James Whitcomb Riley 

"The Late General Sherman" Augustus Jacobson 

"While the common patriot never invited, seems 
never to expect, and certainly does not require the 
tribute such as may be paid him at the banquet-board," 
Riley said in part, "it is ail the more an honor, as I 
take it, when, by general consent of the Army of the 
Tennessee, a mere civilian is permitted to say some- 
thing of him. The common patriot! — he seems so 
accessible. A hero he is, indeed, forever within reach 
and grasp and hand-shake of us all ; in constant touch 
and hail, all unremoved from us by the elevated office 
or insulated service jealously barring him from us 
with guns and fortress walls. The common patriot, 
thank Heaven, is left to roam at large up and down 
the land he glorifies by his presence. Everybody 
knows him familiarly and affectionately by his first 
name or his last. As there is a type of actor so ex- 
cellent and perfect in his art that we cease entirely 
to regard his great gift critically or justly measure 
and appreciate his rare possession as anything but the 
most natural quality in the world, likewise we have 
this type of patriot, so naturally fitted to the part, 
and withal so natively endowed and capable and satis- 
factory in his simple presentation of the character, 
that we are apt to overlook his very highest claims to 
our prolonged applause and our enduring gratitude. 

"This is the common patriot, not the exalted chief- 
tain charging to the front of battle with his glittering 
sword waving onward to the very cannon's mouth, but 
the patriot of the advancing line, with shattered right 
arm limp and useless at his side, the old flag caught 
and lifted with his left, and the terrible 'Battle Hymn 
of the Republic' on his lips. (Applause.) 

"The common patriot! There are regiments of 
them — battalions and brigades — ^vast, earth-shaking 
armies! It was the common patriot who 'somewhat 



360 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

grimly smiled* a smile 400,000 strong ! He it was, in 
rallying legions with the flag overhead, who received 
his marching orders *to the sea/ Nor is it unlikely 
that the common patriot, aside from his God-given 
tendencies, has often found his model in such of his 
great generals as Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and that 
illustrious line of men whose genius forced them on 
to lead, even as at the nation's head the common 
patriot found the type-perfect in the character of the 
immortal Lincoln. (Applause.) 

''Wherever we may find this homely type repeated, 
inevitably we will find a man of commonplace origin. 
He was begotten of the love of home and the shriek, 
and thump, and rattle of a sheepskin band. In the 
political processions of his earliest youth the old flag, 
glittering and fluttering in the sunshine and the wind, 
seemed always to be laughing, as though very much 
tickled over something it had promised on its honor 
not to tell. (Such, the poet recalled, was his own 
vision of it the morning after Lee's surrender.) Its 
stars laughed, and its stripes laughed. Its red, white, 
and blue caught the patriot's own breath as he ran 
from his mother's arms and shouted after it. In- 
stinctively he loved it at first sight, even as his fore- 
fathers had before him, and as his children will after 
him. Therefore is it that he was raised to be an 
element of the country's life and perpetuity as natural 
as the life principle of the republic." 

After prefacing the lines with an old farm scene, 
the poet closed his tribute with "Decoration Day on 
the Place," a poem revamped for the banquet, but 
originally written and attributed to the common 
patriot, "Benjamin F. Johnson of Boone." The cen- 
tral thought in the poem — every day on earth is the 
soldier's decoration day — was received with loud ac- 
claim. The veterans of the Tennessee Army glimpsed 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 361 

through tears the patriot's resting place in the 
orchard — 

"And the flag he died for, smiling and rippling in the 

breeze 
Above his grave, and over that, the robin in the trees." 

The speech, with poem, required a half-hour for 
delivery. When the poet had finished, so press re- 
ports testify, ''the assembly rose as one man and 
waved their napkins until the vast space appeared like 
a troubled sea with waving linen." The hurricane of 
applause was the test of the poet's power, "the only 
test,*' as Mark Twain said of Ingersoll's speech at the 
Grant banquet in the same hall; "people may shout, 
clap their hands, stamp and wave their napkins, but 
none but the master can make them get up on their 
feetr 

"The really great hit of the evening," said the Chi- 
cago Inter Ocean, editorially, "was James Whitcomb 
Riley's tribute to the men who did the actual fighting. 
There was not a commonplace sentence spoken by him, 
and the poem with which he closed deserves a place in 
the little classics of American literature." 

Five minutes the demonstration lasted. "When 
and where," guests asked one another, "had there 
been anything like that in the history of men of let- 
ters?" The storm of applause continuing, the poet 
was compelled again and again to bow his acknowl- 
edgment, and at last, in sheer desperation, to recite 
his popular poem, "The Old Man and Jim." 

Commenting years after on the unusual brilliancy 
of the banquet, Riley vigorously protested against the 



362 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

verdict of the guests and the press. "They permitted 
their love and the applause to bias their judgment/' 
said he. "The hit of the evening was not made by 
the Hoosier Poet. That honor belonged to Henry 
Watterson. *You have heard/ said Watterson in his 
opening remarks, *that the war is over. I am glad 
of it. Roses smell sweeter than gunpowder.' Noth- 
ing finer than that/' added Riley, "has been said since 
Demosthenes. In saying what he did of Grant at 
work on his Memoirs, after he had shouldered his 
gun and fought for the stars and bars, Watterson may 
justly be termed the Flower of Southern Chivalry." 

Said Watterson in closing: "Grant was the em- 
bodiment of simplicity, integrity and courage; every 
inch a general, a soldier and a man, but in the cir- 
cumstances of his last illness, a figure of heroic pro- 
portions for the contemplation of the ages. I recall 
nothing in history so sublime as the spectable of that 
brave spirit, broken in fortune and in health, with the 
dread hand of the dark angel clutched about his throat, 
struggling with every breath to hold the clumsy, 
unfamiliar weapon with which he sought to wrest 
from the jaws of death a little something for the sup- 
port of wife and children when he was gone. If he 
had done nothing else, that would have made his exit 
from the world an immortal epic!'' 

"When Grant did that," said Riley, "he was not 
the commander of armies. He was a common patriot 
leaving an example for civilians to emulate." 

Common patriotism, the significance of neighbor 
and neighborhood, was the poet's theme when he re- 
sponded to the toast, "Our Guest," at the reception to 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 363 

ex-President Harrison, given by the Indianapolis 
Commercial Club in April, 1897: 

''The citizen — the patriot — the soldier — ^the chief- 
tain in the van of battle victory — the chieftain still in 
civil conquest — all have been enumerated and extolled 
by our universal nation — so paternally proud of such 
a son. But may there not be fittingly offered — in 
however brief a v^ay — some comment out of this par- 
ticular community, in the grateful midst of which is 
builded the home of this man — our friend and neigh- 
bor. There — that sounds exactly right. Neighbor. 
Our neighbor. 

"Like the rare list of strong yet lovely words that, 
of their own pronunciation seem to define themselves 
— such as father, mother, home, country, flag — the 
simple, wholesome name of neighbor affects us pleas- 
antly and always as though we had most accurately 
known its fullest meaning from its first utterance in 
our childish ears. To our neighbor, thus, in all neigh- 
borly spirit, we address ourselves to-night — ^here in 
his chosen State and city, where of his own deserving 
in young manhood he won welcome, fixed his dwelling 
and cheerily took his place and chance in the common 
rank and file of his onward-moving fellow citizens. 

''The details of the trials of that earlier time and 
scene the young aspirant of to-day, of course, knows 
little of, nor does that history, as fitfully chronicled 
by reminiscent contributors to the home papers evoke 
its just measure of serious consideration. Only the 
sturdy and heroic participants themselves can realize 
the import of that earlier history — only the comrades 
of that epoch and environment — the old friends — ^the 
old neighbors. To them the simple glories of that 
primitive past yet exceed all its trials and ordeals, and 
draw them into closer comradeship to-day. To them 
that past is sacred, and as they meet, strike hands and 



364 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

fall into hearty discussion of the bygone years, it is 
always with warmth of interest. 

"In the cheeriest, mirthful greeting, there is a minor 
note; in the merriest tv^^inkle of the eye, a certain 
shadowy, tender, yet insistent threat of rain. It is 
the fitting reverence remembrance pays to the youth- 
time of that friendship now grown to such ripe and 
sound maturity. So steadfastly on until this hour has 
it fared with our old friend and neighbor. Loyally, 
with the lapse of years and the advent of newer 
worthy claimants on that friendly interest, he has ever 
extended it willingly, generously and helpfully. He 
has not forgotten his own youth — its struggles and its 
needs — and so his unerring sympathy has inspired in 
the earnest young man and student a firmer faith in 
all his brave resolves, a surer promise and fulfillment 
of his hopes and his ambitions. This most fortunate 
type of the young man is known here and abroad ; he 
may be found to-day, in the flush of the attainments 
of his hopes in life, still happily in this pleasant neigh- 
borhood, or he may be found distinguishing himself 
in fields and scenes remote, but wherever found he is 
ever blessing his stars that it was in this neighbor- 
hood he was first given his true bearings and direc- 
tions upon his successful career and that a true friend 
and neighbor first recognized his worth, and reached 
to him the help of a firm hand, together with the cheer 
and Godspeed that was inspiration. 

"This was, and is, the beneficent and all-pervading 
spirit of our guest to-night — our fellow citizen — the 
always simple, unassuming and unselfish member of a 
simple community so signally favored as to do him 
honor long prior to that universal homage so justly 
won when he 

'Became on Fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope, 
The center of a world's desire.' " 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 365 

When the day came for the dedication of the 
Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at Indianapolis, May 
15, 1902, the poet came forward with the dedicatory 
poem, "The Soldier" — still, in heart and voice, the 
votary of the common patriot — 

"The Soldier! — ^Why, the very utterance 
Is music — as of rallying bugles, blent 
With blur of drums and cymbals and the chants 
Of battle-hymns that shake the continent." 

The newspapers christened it "Indiana's greatest 
day" — a day sacred to the memory of the Silent Vic- 
tors, made impressive by a sunny blue sky, the historic 
parade of battle flags, and the presence of two hun- 
dred thousand people massed in the Monument Circle 
and the streets approaching it. 

As usual on such occasions, the approach of speakers 
and distinguished officials to the platform was greeted 
with outbursts of applause. "Particularly cordial," 
said the press report, "was the reception accorded the 
Hoosier Poet, when his familiar form was seen com- 
ing down the north steps of the Monument to the 
speakers' stand." 

After the parade. Governor Winfield T. Durbin ac- 
cepted the Monument for the state. General Lew 
Wallace presided, and in their order on the program 
introduced former Secretary of State, John W. Foster, 
as the orator of the day, and James Whitcomb Riley 
as the poet of the day. 

Advancing to the front of the stand Riley first 
saluted his fellow litterateur and friend, General Wal- 
lace. Then turning to the sea of humanity before him 



366 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

he waved his hand for silence — and silence came, **a 
hush over the multitude while he read the poem that 
was in itself a tribute to the singer and the song." 
When he had concluded, a storm of applause proved 
once more that there was something in the poet's 
voice that delighted the hearts of men. 

'It is to me a pleasure and a privilege to present a 
simple tribute to the soldiers," was the poet's first 
word to the multitude. It was a tribute — ^but the 
tribute with eloquence of genius in it was "A Monu- 
ment for the Soldiers," a poem first presented to the 
public in a weekly paper nearly twenty years before — 
written in the author's joyous, bounding days, before 
he was excessively concerned about the appearance of 
his poems in book form, when, as a knowing critic 
said, '*he did not have to be careful of the collocation 
and cadence of words, when the inherent lilt and music 
of his lines took everybody captive" : 

"A Monument for the Soldiers! 

And what will ye build it of? 
Can ye build it of marble, or brass, or bronze, 

Outlasting the Soldiers' love? 
Can ye glorify it with legends 

As grand as their blood hath writ 
From the inmost shrine of this land of thine 

To the outermost verge of it? 

"And the answer came: We would build it 

Out of our hopes made sure. 
And out of our prayers and tears. 

And out of our faith secure: 
We would build it out of the great white truths 

Their death hath sanctified, 
And the sculptured forms of the men in arms. 

And their faces ere they died. 



A PATRIOTIC CIVILIAN 367 

"A monument for the soldiers! 

Built of a people's love, 
And blazoned and decked and panoplied 

With the hearts ye build it of! 
And see that ye build it stately, 

In pillar and niche and gate, 
And high in pose as the souls of those 

It would commemorate!" 

While the tattered emblems of heroic days, the battle 
flags, were borne past the reviewing stand, Riley stood 
as one enchanted by some beatific vision. Those 
near him, the aged widow of Governor Oliver P. Mor- 
ton for one, observed the light in his countenance. An 
''invisible host" was marching by — and Riley saw it. 
Commenting afterward, he explained that there had 
flashed on his mind a new apprehension of that felici- 
tous phrase in IngersolFs "Vision of War" — the seren- 
ity of death. {''Earth may run red with other wars — 
they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar 
of conflict, they found the serenity of death/') 

A quarter of a century before, this radiant orator 
had spoken these words from a platform on the same 
plaza, a few steps only from where the poet was stand- 
ing. "On that day of other days," said Riley, "the 
clouds wept — and well they might, since men wept 
tears of joy as well as grief, for if ever language of 
man was accented by an angel, it was that day. My 
day was not a day of weeping. The woes of the war 
were far away. I gazed into a serene sky, a sky of 
inobscurity, a heaven of light and life and love — and 
that was the serenity, the inobscurity of death. Death 
was not a mystery — death was not the Dread Angel — 
death was not darkness, not night." 



368 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Riley was ever unshaken in his belief in the im- 
mortality of trees and flowers and friends. No mat- 
ter how all is confused in our near-sighted eyes, there 
is a Paradise—there is life eternal. Though our com- 
panions, our children, go mysteriously from us, they 
are still faring on in the Beyond, was his faith. Had 
not Longfellow assured us that they were going to 
school where they no longer need our poor instruc- 
tion? "Alone at night," Riley attested, "I have heard 
music so sweet, so superior to all earthly harmonies, 
that it seems a profanation to mention it, — ^such music 
as Ole Bull has been hearing since he went to Para- 
dise. Who could look upon him now, radiant, eloquent 
with fancy and understanding? One of his pleasures 
is to stroll back here to give me and other musicians 
glimpses of his rapture." 

Thus Riley was charmed with The Blue Bird, the 
Belgian poet's story of the little brother and sister 
roaming through the fairy world in search of happi- 
ness, and finding it at last in their own hearts at home. 
Particularly he sanctioned the suggestion that our 
burial grounds are fairy gardens where birds sing and 
flowers bloom — ^that our soldiers, our friends, though 
departed, are still living. 

"Where are the dead?" the little sister asked — 
humanity asks. 

"There are no dead," the brother answered — and 
that, Riley was assured, is the truth for all ages — ^the 
only answer — *'There are no dead,*' 



CHAPTER XXI 

LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 

^^^TT^HE American stage lost a great actor when 

I Riley refused to take the profession seriously 

^ as a life work," remarked Sir Henry Irving, 

after hearing the poet in the New York Authors' 

Readings. 

"Riley was a close observer from childhood,'* said 
his Greenfield chum, John Davis. ''Nothing ever 
escaped him. He would wander around with us boys 
over there (pointing to the willows on the banks of 
Brandy wine) and perhaps a stranger would come 
along. Soon as he had passed Riley would mimic 
him. It was natural for the poet to take his part in 
a play. He was a great actor." 

"He was a born actor," said his old Schoolmaster. 
"I remember his acting in a play called The Child of 
Waterloo, in which he took the character of Troubled 
Tom. He was supposed to be the son of a blacksmith 
left on the battle-field. He made the character so 
funny, made so much out of it, that it became the star 
part in the play." 

"Henry, you and I have been studying all these 
years how to act, but here is a young man out of the 
West, who knows all we know by nature," said the 
French actor, Coquelin to Irving, after hearing Riley 
at the Savage Club in London — an exaggeration, but 
proof, if proof were necessary, that the poet was 

369 



370 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

extraordinarily gifted as an actor. Few men ever 
succeeded more superbly in entrancing an audience, 
in stealing away its faculties and leading it captive 
to his will. "Never any other man," wrote Booth 
Tarkington, "stood night after night on stage or plat- 
form to receive such solid roars of applause for the 
'reading' of poems — and for himself. He did not 
'read' his poems; he did not 'recite' them, either; he 
took his whole body into his hands, as it were, and by 
his wizard mastery of suggestion left no James Whit- 
comb Riley at all upon the stage; instead, the audi- 
ences saw and heard whatever the incomparable 
comedian wished them to see and hear." 

How did he do it? No one can tell, any more than 
one can explain why "the trumpet vine blooms." 
Riley as the Signal Man in Under the Gaslight, or as 
Adam Brock in the historical drama, Charles XII, or 
impersonating the old-timer in "Griggsby's Station," 
or the elf child in "Little Orphant Annie" — what was 
the secret of his power? His audience could not ex- 
plain it. Like the French he possessed the gift of 
managing minds by his accent and the caress of his 
speech, but when that is said, there was mystery still 
about it. 

Nor could the poet explain, and he seldom attempted 
it. He sometimes attributed it to the character of 
his selections. "A long experience," said he, "has 
taught me not to be ambitious to instruct anybody 
from the footlights. An audience does not want that, 
but it does want to be cheerfully entertained. It 
never tires of simple, wholesome, happy themes. 
Give it what it desires — ^here is the secret, if there is 
any secret in it. Make things as entertaining to the 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 371 

audience as to yourself. An audience is cosmopolitan 
in character, a neighborly gathering, all on a level. 
The rich are there, and they are interested in the poor, 
since they came originally from the ranks of those 
who walk by the wayside. They know as I know that 
the crude man is generally moral, for Nature has just 
let go his hand. She's just been leading him through 
the dead leaves and the daisies. When I deal with 
such a man in my readings, I give him credit for every 
virtue ; but what he does and the way he does it is his 
way, not mine. It is my office to interpret him. 

"I talk of the dear old times," Riley continued, 
"when there were no social distinctions, of pioneer 
homes and towns, where there was a warm welcome 
for all, just as if all were blood brothers as Kipling 
says. I muse or romp happily amid the scenes of my 
childhood and the paradise is promptly recognized and 
appreciated by my audience. The difficult thing, the 
delicate office, is to know what to choose, and when 
to stop.'' The poet did not say it, but his program 
truly answered both questions. 

But the secret of his success in his reading was not 
so much the concern of the people. What they wanted 
was more of it, and in spite of Riley's repeated re- 
solve to retire from the platform, he continued to 
please the public in that way, the public in turn re- 
warding him with ovations and a big bank-account. 
But never again did he prolong the engagements. 
Once an offer of five hundred dollars a night for fifty 
nights was declined. Three or four nights a week for 
four or five weeks was the rule, then perhaps a rest 
for a year, and sometimes two or three years, the 
engagements being mostly confined to large cities and 



372 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

university centers. "My last swing around the 
track/' was his final word; '1 have pulled the check 
string ; never again for my money or the gate money" 
— and that was the end of platf orming for the Hoosier 
Poet. 

In 1894 Riley's father had died and the poet had 
purchased and restored the homestead at Greenfield, 
which the father had lost by speculation soon after 
the Civil War. From the day of its restoration the 
homestead became a shrine, and more and more the 
poet an idol. Although he had climbed far, he had 
not been lost to the view of old-time friends and neigh- 
bors. Since the publication of Old^Fashioned Roses, 
he had been widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, 
and since his New York appearance the demand for 
him on the platform had been unceasing. Greenfield 
desired to contribute its mite to the wide wave of 
approval. 

To face the men and women he had known always 
was a test of the poet's courage, and from time to 
time invitations had been declined. But in January, 
1896, having an opportunity to donate the total re- 
ceipts from his reading to a church, and the further 
understanding that his old Schoolmaster was to assist 
him in the program, he yielded and one Tuesday even- 
ing stepped from the Pan-Handle Accommodation to 
find "a reception," he said, "on a scale worthy the re- 
turn of a prodigal son." There was no reception com- 
mittee except a voluntary one comprising the in- 
habitants. The platform was a mass of people, and 
back of the station the crowd extended far into the 
muddy street. As he stepped from the coach to the 
platform he was greeted by strains from the Old Band, 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 373 

the organization that had been made famous by his 
verse — the same old band, though some of its mem- 
bers were missing, that in the war days had played 
''Lily Dale" and *'Hazel Dell," music which other 
crowds in distant towns had heard many times since, 
in the poem. 

The entertainment was in the old Masonic Hall, 
whose walls echoed incidents of the poet's school-days 
— the schoolroom, which he had helped to equip with 
footlights, scenery and other theatrical paraphernalia, 
and in which he had been locally conspicuous as an 
actor. An hour before his appearance the crowd filled 
the standing room space, the wings of the stage, the 
doorways and the stairway leading up from the street. 
Never before in Greenfield had there been such enthu- 
siasm over the return of a citizen. 

After some musical numbers, the poet stepped to the 
footlights. Addressing the audience as old-time 
friends he said: "After an absence of some length 
and wanderings that have been devious, I am deeply 
touched by this cordial welcome to the place of my 
birth. It will always be a dear old home to me 
because it contains the best, the kindest and most for- 
bearing friends that I have ever known or am likely 
to know. I am moved also this evening by finding 
myself in the presence of my old friend and master. 
Captain Harris. How to thank you and him, as I 
thank my blessed stars, reminds me of an anecdote, 
as Mr. Lincoln used to say." 

Here the poet told of a miner, an old forty-niner, 
who returned to his native town in the condition of 
poverty that he was when he left it. He had no 
money, but he had had plenty of experience. He had 



374 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

been offered a quarter-section of fine California land, 
with fruit trees, and springs, and a vein of gold 
running through it — all this for a pair of boots, and 
he had not bought it because he did not have the 
boots. "So it is with my thanks,*' continued the poet. 
"I do not have them, at least I have not language in 
which to express them. I have in mind a poem which 
found its fundamental principles in this town. Many 
of you will recall our old band — ^the old Saxhorn Band. 
I want you to fancy the speaker is an old resident of 
Greenfield, who has moved away, and after many years 
has returned." 

Then, with an artless look at the orchestra, where 
sat the few surviving members of the old organiza- 
tion, he recited the poem with the well-known refrain 
— "I want to hear the old band play." At its con- 
clusion the applause was so prolonged that a citizen 
arose in the audience and asked for silence, remind- 
ing the people that they were in an old building, and 
should the applause be too noisy the floor might col- 
lapse. 

Riley made no attempt to leave the stage, bowing 
his acknowledgments. "There is reminiscence for us 
all," he said when silence had been restored, "in an 
old town and country sketch, which attempts to pic- 
ture two barefoot boys, who had an old aunt in the 
country whom they used to visit — ^two brothers, one, 
in his declining years, writing the other, who had 
moved to the Far West — 

"Wasn't it pleasant, brother mine, 
In those old days of the lost sunshine 
Of youth — when the Saturday's chores were through, 




In possession of The John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis 

From a Portrait of the Poet by John S. Sargent 




Teavelers' Kest, the Tavern on the Old National Road, 
Philadelphia, Indiana — 1850 — a Memory 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 375 

And the 'Sunday's wood' in the kitchen, too, 
And we went visiting, *me and you,' 

Out to Old Aunt Mary's?" 

Then came *'The Lily-Bud," which, perfect as it 
was, his audience declared was not a whit superior to 
his rendition of it in the old town twenty years before. 
Although the poem was not his own, he had so **Riley- 
ized" it that it seemed his own. 

And so followed other familiar selections, among 
them "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," which he read 
with such feeling that the "Golden Girl, a bright vision 
to us all," said one of his hearers, "seemed to step 
out on the stage and lean over his shoulder to kiss him 
on the sly for the sentiment." 

In October, 1896, Riley again answered the call 
from the Rocky Mountains, appearing in Pueblo, 
Greeley, Colorado Springs and Denver. But the sum- 
mit of interest for the poet in that direction was 
Myron Reed, who, living in Denver, had appealed 
annually to his friend for a visit, since their voyage 
together to England. "From our youth," said Riley, 
"we were voyagers on the deep, the ocean of life 
(which probably accounts for my chimerical fancies 
since seamen are prone to be superstitious). We kept 
our lamp blazing in the binnacle. We felt the sea-mist 
on our brows and the surging waters against the 
prow. There was something in Reed's presence that 
gave me strength. He was familiar with flinty up-hill 
ways, and the dangers of the deep, and the cries of 
drowning men. He was always the good Samaritan 
to those whose lot in life had not been happily cast. 
He had a genius for sympathy. He kept an eye out 



376 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

for sea-tossed pilgrims. Thus his love in the early 
days for me." 

"Where is your trunk?" asked Reed when Riley 
reached the mountains. 

*ln Lockerbie Street," was the answer. "Nine 
times out of ten, when I travel with a trunk, the thing 
is lost. Recently, I discovered that my friends who 
have *gone beyond the line' are having fun with me 
at my expense. Since crossing the divide Nye has 
been steering me into wrong trains and smiling about 
it. So I burden myself no more with heavy baggage. 
If I travel with a trunk I am haunted with the fear 
that it will be lost. I go about the country with a 
grip, and I keep a tenacious hold on it all day, but I 
never feel quite safe about it at night. If there is 
ever a horrible railway accident and among the debris 
is discovered a valise with an arm attached to it, they 
may bury it without further identification as the 
fragments of the Hoosier Poet." 

Three thousand people enjoyed and cheered the poet 
in Colorado Springs, and Reed introduced him to an 
audience equally large in Denver. "It was my pleas- 
ure," said Reed, "to introduce the speaker of the even- 
ing to his first Indianapolis audience. He came from 
a small Indiana town, then he came from Indiana, 
then he came from the United States, and then he was 
known on both sides of the Atlantic. If he has more 
friends elsewhere than here it is because the city else- 
where is larger than Denver." 

History affords few examples of a love more abid- 
ing than that of Reed for Riley. It was akin to 
Charles Sumner's devotion to Longfellow. Eminently 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 377 

fitting it was that Reed should occupy a chair at the 
edge of the platform while the poet rendered his pro- 
gram. Friends marked the glow of satisfaction on 
his face. As if he said, This is the crowning moment 
— now let thy servant depart in peace. 

Within two short years the departure came. In his 
last moments, the nurse observed that Reed was re- 
peating a name. There seemed a thread of fine recol- 
lection in it. Leaning nearer to hear, she discovered 
that he was feebly whispering *'Riley." Thus the 
preacher and soldier, master of men and lover of man- 
kind, passed through the gates to the Beyond, with 
the name of his friend on quivering lips. 

In November, 1897, the poet devoted two weeks to 
Kansas City, Topeka, Lincoln, Omaha and Des Moines. 
"Seven nights," he remarked after the reading in the 
last city, *'and every night an ovation. It was not 
thus with the Hoosier Poet in days gone by." 

There is no explaining Riley, said William Reedy in 
the St. Louis Mirror, February, 1898. The only thing 
to do is to surrender to him. St. Louis surrendered. 
She crowded a large theater and crowned the success 
of the evening with a graceful introduction of the 
poet by the governor of the state. 

In April of the same year Riley made a little 
journey into his "southern neighborhood" — Memphis, 
Nashville, Atlanta and other cities of Dixie fame. In 
October, beginning in Cincinnati, he continued the 
series of ovations north to the Lakes, and eastward to 
Boston. Once more he became the center of affection 
and attention in a brilliant, representative gathering' 
in Tremont Temple. The reading was under the 



378 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

auspices of the Woman's Club House Corporation, and 
the poet was happily assisted in his program by local 
musicians, as he had been in other cities. 

When Julia Ward Howe, leaning on the arm of the 
poet, slowly mounted the platform, there was an out- 
burst of applause that had no precedent in Boston or 
elsewhere. The audience realized that it was viewing 
a picture which no assembly w^as likely to behold 
again. "I find myself charged with an introduction," 
said Mrs. Howe, taking Riley by the hand and leading 
him to the front of the stage, "a duty which is as wel- 
come as it is responsible. The program this evening 
is fittingly one of music and poetry, and may it be that 
this house will be a temple of the best harmony." 

The poet as he stood beside the venerable woman 
was positively pale. Soon however he overcame his 
nervousness, his cheeks were flushed, and poet and 
audience were one with each other. In response to 
the introduction he said : "In the incident of ordinary 
travel, it is a novel experience and delight for a West- 
erner to visit this historic spot — indeed his most mat- 
ter-of-fact coming into this storied city is so mem- 
orable an event as to touch his American spirit with 
a still newer sense of national pride and reverence and 
obligation. Judge, then, the bewildered emotional 
state of the present visitor, brought face to face with 
so distinctive a people and presented for their gracious 
tolerance by a citizen so distinguished as to have 
uttered an inspired song for our Republic that shall 
not die while patriot hearts are fired with patriot 
love." (Prolonged applause.) 

Then the poet ''with a sort of provincial drawl," 
launched into his usual program. Before leaving 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 379 

Boston, while conversing with Mrs. Howe, Riley ex- 
pressed his debt to her for his poem, ''The Peace- 
Hymn of the Republic," which he had read at the 29th 
G. A. R. Encampment at Louisville, Kentucky, — ^how 
he, while writing it, had trusted to the inspiration of 
another, the author of ''The Battle-Hymn of the Re- 
public." "My effort was a faint echo," he said to 
Mrs. Howe, who promptly silenced him by praising a 
sentiment in his own poem — 

"We felt our Pilot's presence with His hand upon the 
storm. 

As we went sailing on." 

"With that Pilot," added Mrs. Howe, "we walked the 
troubled waters. Our Ship of State groped through 
the smoke of war to the day of your hymn — ^the day 
of peace." 

In March, 1899, Riley answered calls from Pitts- 
burgh, Princeton University, Philadelphia and other 
points in that region. His audience in Washington 
was in the highest degree representative, consisting 
of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, and many 
of the most prominent social leaders of the Capital. 
It was a spontaneous, heartfelt compliment, with 
which a city sometimes delights to honor its chosen 
idol. "The audience which greeted the poet at the 
Grand Opera House," said the Washington Post, "was 
a tribute to genius. The spacious auditorium was 
taxed to its utmost capacity. On a night when the 
counter-attractions were the most alluring of the 
whole season in this city, with what are probably the 
greatest drawing cards of the dramatic world opposed 



380 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

to him, he received an ovation which almost consti- 
tutes an epoch in his career. Recalled time after 
time, during the progress of the reading, his triumph 
received its crowning demonstration when, after his 
concluding number, the audience refused to leave the 
hall, and compelled him by perfect thunders of ap- 
plause to appear again." 

In the larger cities, where the demand for seats was 
very great, the poet sometimes gave two evenings to 
the public. This he did in Chicago in October, 1900. 
His quaint introductions to the recitations were the 
same here as elsewhere, the program each evening 
having four general divisions, suggesting the char- 
acter of his recitations. 

TUESDAY EVENING 

1. Annals of the Poor. 3. Character Sketches. 

2. Hoosier Verse. 4. Rhymes of Childhood. 

"I have to offer this evening," the poet said, intro- 
ducing his program, "some homely specimens, with 
your kindly tolerance, of the dialect that is peculiar to 
our Western American country, and these specimens, 
I may say, are intended to be conscientious studies of 
the people and their peculiar feelings and character- 
istics, as well as of their home language, which is 
their native tongue. I do not know how better to 
begin, because I want to gain your favor by relieving 
you of any possible fear that I am going to administer 
a lecture, and therefore I will at once offer you a char- 
acter sketch of an old country farmer, seventy years 
of age, the pioneer American type, upon whose home- 
stead are found possibly not more than a half dozen 
books, each carefully selected, each an ever-present 
inspiration. In this connection we must remember 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 381 

that the best of all the works of this meagre library- 
is The Book of Books; following that, The Prince of 
the House of David, and for history — not the history 
of an elevated countryman but the history of a true 
American like himself, The History of Daniel Boone, 
For romance, such as Scottish Chiefs, Children of the 
Abbey, Pilgrim's Progress, and one or more of the 
poets, numbering among them some of the collected 
hymns that are sung in the little country churches, 
over the lines of which the old man has painfully gone 
a syllable at a time, again and again, until he knows 
them all and loves them all. Then we must remem- 
ber also that this splendid type of the old man goes 
hand in hand with the all-kind Mother Nature, lives 
in the green fields and near the still waters, where the 
opportunity for contemplation is near the heart of 
Nature. And, so we find the old man is after all 
equipped with an education, with wisdom and philos- 
ophy, at which, somehow or other we feel abashed 
when we try to apologize for it. I offer the old man 
just as nearly as he expressed it in his homely talk 
and philosophy, when the safety of the crops is being 
considered and when some of the discouragements of 
life are being manifested.'' 

With this the poet recited "Thoughts fer the Dis- 
curaged Farmer," and then in their order, "The Lily 
Bud," "The Old Soldier's Story," "Out to Old Aunt 
Mary's," "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," "Down to 
the Capital," "The Object Lesson," and "Little Or- 
phant Annie." 

WEDNESDAY EVENING 

1. Poems Here at Home. 3. Life Studies 

2. Home Folks. 4. The Book of Joyous 

Children. 

"I am glad to have the privilege of offering again 
some character studies of our native Western dialect," 



382 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the poet began, "together with some of the character- 
istics of our native people, and in connection to answer 
favorably the request for two or three selections given 
last evening. I am not going to worry you with a long 
preamble or an expression of the intrinsic merit of 
the people at heart, but will at once begin this series 
of homely offerings. And first I present a couple of 
studies in contrast, and will ask you at this time to 
think of the speaker as an old man who has lived upon 
the farm all his life, has no other ambitions than to 
be on the old homestead. He is pleased and delighted 
with his family; his neighbors are always neighborly 
— a sort of family affection existing all round. With 
the inspiration of the divine — I may call it the divine 
— atmosphere of the season that is now about us, our 
old friend finds, instead of the melancholy so often 
associated with the sere and yellow leaf, much that is 
otherwise than gloomy. He speaks his homely tribute 
in this way*': 

Here the poet recited ''When the Frost Is on the 
Punkin." The remaining selections for the evening 
were, "The Old Man and Jim,'' "The Tree Toad," 
"Out to Old Aunt Mary's," "Tradin' Joe," "The Object 
Lesson," "Dutch Frank," and "The Bear Story." 

Chicago was a great triumph. Each evening before 
the curtain rang up, the old historic hall was filled to 
overflowing with representatives of all classes. From 
the first the audience was in sympathy i^dth the poet. 
It knew his poems and anticipated his points ; laughed 
with him, cried with him, and treated him throughout 
with such generous understanding that it seemed no 
idle compliment when, at the close of his reading the 
second night, he thanked the people for their kind- 
ness, and spoke of them as his "very dear friends." 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 383 

If, as Barrie says in his Tommy and Grizel, (ran a 
press report), genius be the power to become a boy 
again, then the Hoosier Poet came within that class 
last night at Music Hall. The boy of six or seven was 
the character, and the poet became that boy. The 
lad in all his drollery, his mischief, his unconscious- 
ness, stood and whined upon that stage. In one 
short evening the poet had been the small boy, the 
Hoosier farmer in divers roles, the old soldier with 
one leg, and the educator with a theory and the pea- 
nut. No wonder Charles Dickens loved to read and 
act his characters, provided he received anything like 
the applause which last night welcomed James Whit- 
comb Riley. 

The three years following 1900 was a rest period, 
with the exception of a few selections at the Authors' 
Readings for the Harrison Memorial Fund in Indi- 
anapolis, May 30 and 31, 1902, perhaps the most 
notable and brilliant literary and social event in the 
history of the city. The original intention was to 
have Riley appear only on the first night. At the 
last moment an appeal was made to him to take part 
in the second evening's program, as seen in the follow- 
ing (part of a letter addressed to him and signed by 
Vice President Fairbanks, the chairman, and the 
authors who were to read that night) : 

With the utmost sincerity and good comradeship 
we beg you to appear with us on the last night of the 
Readings. We know that we are asking a sacrifice 
of you, but you must realize on your part that it is an 
opportunity that may never come to us again. In this 
we justify our selfishness. 



384 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

With the heartiest good wishes and the confident 
hope that you will be one of us, we are 
Faithfully yours, 

Charles W. Fairbanks, 

Lew Wallace, 

Meredith Nicholson, 

George Ade, 

EvALEEN Stein, 

Charles Major, 

George Barr McCutcheon, 

Mary Hartwell Catherwood. 

After Riley had given the closing number the first 
evening, the applause was deafening, hundreds rising 
in the audience and waving their handkerchiefs in 
shouts of approval. "That's a tremendous noise to 
make over a little man," said Riley to friends stand- 
ing in the wings of the stage. When silence was re- 
stored he came forward and gave * 'Little Orphant 
Annie." 

At the close of the second evening, after he had 
responded with recitations to three encores, he stepped 
again to the footlights and said, "I will give one more 
sketch, and if that does not remove the audience, we 
will fumigate the hall." 

The thunders of applause that greeted that sally 
bore striking resemblance to the clamor of a political 
convention. 

Booth Tarkington who appeared on the program the 
second evening, has left on record a matchless tribute 
to the magic of the poet on the platform. He said, 
among other things, in Collier's Weekly, "He held a 
literally unmatched power over his audience for riot- 
ous laughter or for actual copious tears; and no one 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 385 

who ever saw an exhibition of that power will forget 
it — or forget him. There he stood, alone upon the 
stage, a blond, shortish, whimsical man in evening 
clothes — a figure with *a whole lot of style,* and a 
whole lot of his own style too ! He offered a deferen- 
tial prefatory sentence or so; then suddenly face and 
figure altered, seemed to merge completely into those 
of a person altogether different from the poet, and 
not Mr. Riley, but a Hoosier farm hand, perhaps, or 
a thin little girl stood before you, 'done to life/ Then 
the voice came, 'done to the life,' too — done to the last 
half-audible breath at the end of husky chuckle or 
wistful sigh. There was no visible effort on the part 
of the magician : the audience did not strain or worry 
for him as audiences so often do for those who 'enter- 
tain' them, because his craft lay not in contortion but 
in a glamouring suggestion that held spectators rapt 
and magnetized." 

In the fall of 1903 the poet made the most successful 
tour of his career — financially as well as artistically 
successful, the door receipts in some cities totaling 
two thousand dollars — quite a contrast to the begin- 
ning of his platform success at Lewisville, Indiana, 
a quarter-century before, when the admission was ten 
cents, the total receipts nominal and his portion four 
dollars. The tour began at Frankfort, Indiana, with 
a tribute from a prince of orators. Congressman 
Charles B. Landis. "What a magnificent audience!" 
said he, introducing the poet. "What a temptation 
for a man in my business to deliver an address on the 
tariff, or the free and unlimited coinage of silver, or 
the gold standard. Frankfort should be proud that 
she is the initial point for a series of entertainments 



386 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

which are certain to be memorable. I have always 
contended that Riley comes nearer being everybody's 
poet than anybody who has ever sung. How proud 
Indiana should be! What fame her sons and daugh- 
ters have brought her in the literary field! Had she 
no other literary light than Riley, I contend that she 
would still be the envy of her sister states. His poem 
*01d Glory' will be read and repeated as long as the 
stars shine on the banner. I remember that when my 
son was four years old, we read to him from Riley's 
verse, and the pathos of it brought tears to his childish 
eyes. That was the guileless tribute of childhood to 
genius. And now, when I present our friend to you, 
let all rise to their feet, and let every man and every 
woman, with handkerchief in hand wave him a wel- 
come." 

Instantly the audience rose and for the moment, 
poet and congressman saw through dev^ eyes a sea 
of billowy white. 

Quitting Frankfort, with Dickens' Christmas 
Stories and The Oxford Book of English Verse in his 
bag for reading between stations, the poet continued 
a circuit of Indiana cities, then northward to Saginaw, 
Michigan, returning through Ann Arbor, Detroit, 
Toledo and Dayton to Music Hall, Cincinnati, the 
interest and attendance increasing with each engage- 
ment. "Why should our city not be 'home' for Riley?" 
asked the Cincinnati Post, "B.e belongs to the world, 
and the world is proud of the kinship. He is one of 
the few men who can hang up their hats anywhere 
and find a welcome and hearty handshakes and cordial 
greetings. He is a missionary. The sunshine that 



LAST DAYS ON THE PLATFORM 387 

drips from his pen makes a million smiles. He 
teaches love and his school is open all the time/* 

The Post and the public did not know of the trials 
of traveling, of the poet's almost morbidly sensitive 
nature. They could not believe that the man who 
kept them vibrating like a pendulum " 'twixt a smile 
and a tear/' suffered every evening, before facing his 
audience, from nervous apprehension, known as ''stage 
fright." But so he did. The poet the public knew — 
and the one it should have always uppermost in mind 
— was the singer who banished pain and sorrow, the 
lover of children and flowers and fairies. While he 
passed, the skies were sunny — 

"In the suburb, in the town, 

On the railway, in the square, 
Came a beam of gladness down 
Doubling daylight everywhere." 

From Cincinnati the tour swung eastward to Pitts- 
burgh, that the poet might grasp the hand of the rich- 
hearted Ras Wilson. "James Whitcomb Riley," wrote 
Wilson in the Pittsburg Gazette after the poet's visit, 
"has been before the public personally ever since his 
poems became known, and there are but few nooks 
and corners in this country that he has not visited on 
invitation given by the people, and to all of which he 
has a standing invitation to come again, and come 
often, and stay as long as he can." From Pittsburgh 
the way led westward through Peoria, Illinois, and 
Des Moines and Omaha to Topeka, Kansas, where the 
poet had the largest audience in his platform history, 
not that he had more friends in Topeka than else- 



388 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

where, but because the seating capacity of the Toler 
Auditorium was larger. Homeward bound he gave 
another night to Kansas City, and, as was his desire, 
terminated his tour December 14, 1903, at Logansport, 
Indiana, — ^that, as the sequel proved, being his fare- 
well reading to the American people. 



CHAPTER XXII 

IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 

THE first to pay the academic compliment to the 
poet was Yale University. The honor came as 
a surprise, not only to Riley but to his friends 
everywhere, for it was well known that he was not a 
college man, hardly a product of the common schools. 
He was a man of letters, but **so far removed from the 
academic methods and manner, in both his work and 
in his personality," said the Indianapolis Joitmal, 
"that in the minds of those who know him best he is 
not in any way associated with the college idea." 

The commencement exercises took place in Battel! 
Chapel, June 25, 1902. "Mr. President," said Pro- 
fessor Bernadotte Perrin, the public orator of the day : 
"I have the honor to present to you for the honorary 
degree of Master of Arts, James Whitcornb Riley. 

"This Hoosier has achieved the name, the fame, and 
the still more enviable influence of a national poet. 
His hundreds of thousands of readers come to love 
him as Whittier and Longfellow were loved. The 
rustic voices of his dialect have revealed Theocritean 
and Sicilian shepherds in our Indiana. The murmur 
of their voices, for countless men and women, is like 
Shakespeare's sleep, — 'that knits up the raveled sleave 
of care.' " 

Then arose "that striking figure," as Riley re- 
marked afterward, "the right man in the right place," 

389 



390 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

President Arthur Twining Hadley. "As an exponent 
of poetic arts in country life/' said the president, "we 
hereby confer on you the degree of Master of Arts." 

The hood appropriate to the degree was then placed ' 
on the poet's head — and he became a son of Old Eli. 

After hearing Riley at the alumni dinner, some 
fears were expressed that he did not regard the honor 
with the dignity it deserved, although the cheering 
over what he said amounted to "a splendid ovation." 
In a graceful little speech he spoke of attending the 
commencement of a seventy-year-old college in Indi- 
ana, "but here was Yale one hundred and thirty years 
old when my little Indiana college was bom. What 
surprises me however is that it took Yale two hundred 
years to give me the degree." 

The poet was tremendously proud of the honor, then 
and ever after. He liked the statement of Senator 
Henry Cabot Lodge, who also received a degree, that 
we Americans, whether inside or outside the college, 
are working together for the greatest good of our 
great Republic, and he fondly repeated the Senator's 
words: "A rose in the hand is worth thousands 
placed upon a grave, and so to-day it is a great and 
glorious blessing to have honors in this world which 
money can not produce and which money can not 
buy." 

The Indianapolis "News thought the honor fairly 
distributed between Yale and Indiana. "All true as 
far as it goes," said the Chicago RecordrHerald, "but 
Mr. Riley and Yale and Indiana are not the only re- 
cipients of the honor. He is an American poet, and 
the whole nation has a share in the honor which he 
has received." 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 391 

Whether familiar with the poet in their childhood 
or not, the Yale students were always interested in 
Riley, "took to him," said Professor William Lyon 
Phelps, "as naturally as spring follows winter." The 
Yale courses in American Literature, since 1897 had 
included studies of the Hoosier Poet. Doctor Phelps 
had required critical essays on two Riley volumes, 
Poems Here at Home and Neghborly Poem^. And to 
him is due the honor of first suggesting to the Yale 
Corporation that Riley receive a degree from that 
institution. He said: "A university can do nothing 
better than to recognize and formally mark with 
academic distinction, genuine creative work in litera- 
ture." 

In this connection Riley's admirers must always be 
grateful to the venerable Professor Henry A. Beers, 
who long before the degree was conferred said in his 
book on American literature that James Whitcomb 
Riley had become a national poet, indicating that he 
had taken the place left vacant by Longfellow. 

At the commencement exercises Doctor Beers was 
the poet's right-hand man. "I can not quite see why 
geniuses like Mark Twain and Riley, whose books are 
read and loved by hundreds and thousands of their 
countrymen," he wrote subsequently, "should care very 
much for a college degree. The fact remains, how- 
ever, that they are gratified by the compliment, which 
stamps their performances with a sort of official sanc- 
tion. When Mr. Riley came on to New Haven to take 
his degree, he was a bit nervous about making a pub- 
lic appearance in unwonted conditions although he 
had been used to facing popular audiences with great 
applause when he gave his delightful readings from 



392 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

his poems. He rehearsed the affair in advance, try- 
ing on his Master's gown and reading me his poem, 
*No Boy Knows When He Goes to Sleep/ which he 
proposed to use if called on for a speech. He asked 
me if it v/ould do : it did. For at the alumni dinner 
which followed the conferring of degrees, when Riley 
got to his feet and read the piece, the audience broke 
loose. It was evident whatever the learned gentle- 
men on the platform might think, the undergraduates 
and the young alumni knew their Riley; and that his 
enrolment on the Yale catalogue was far and away 
the most popular act of the day." 

In Philadelphia, on Washington's birthday, 1904, 
the poet was honored by The University of Pennsyl- 
vania, the exercises taking place in the spacious Acad- 
emy of Music, where for twenty years and more he 
had, at intervals, charmed great audiences with his 
public readings. It was an imposing spectacle, the 
governor of the state, the faculty, the trustees and 
other officers of the university filing in on the wide 
stage while the audience rose to the strains of The 
Star-Spangled Banner. 

The Hoosier Poet's was the first name called. "We 
have invited to be present, James Whitcomb Riley, 
because he is a writer of immortal verse," began the 
Public Orator, Joseph Levering Jones. "He is a poet 
supremely idyllic," the orator continued, in part, "but 
in the deep glimpses that he gives of country life we 
see not Bacchus or Pan. He shuns the antique world. 
He lives, a free and aspiring modern, out under the 
heavens, where youth and energy dwell and oppor- 
tunity extends her open hand. The imposing features 
of wealth and power inspire not his pen. His art is 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 393 

inimitable when it deals with the humble, those undis- 
tinguished in life, where the emotions are still nobly- 
primitive and loyalty and gentle devotion rule the 
heart and govern conduct. 

*'For these rare attributes in his felicitous verse 
and prose we, the Trustees, present him to the Pro- 
vost that he may receive the degree of Doctor of 
Letters." 

But one thing more was required to" round out the 
patriotic program of the day, and that was the poet's 
contribution at the alumni dinner — his rendition of 
"The Name of Old Glory," which was received with 
tremendous applause. 

No other western literary man had ever received 
the academic recognition that had been accorded Riley. 
"His reception was in every way most distinguished," 
said Meredith Nicholson. "He now has degrees from 
Yale and Pennsylvania, and neither of those institu- 
tions is in the habit of throwing honors around 
promiscuously." 

Prior to the honors from Pennsylvania, the poet re- 
ceived a degree from Wabash College and subsequently 
one from Indiana University. "It is doubtful," said 
the Denver Times, "if in the whole field of American 
literature there could be found one whose recognition 
would meet with such universal approval. Riley has 
accomplished what no other poet before him and none 
of his contemporaries has succeeded in doing. He has 
created a place in literature which he has filled to the 
satisfaction of the great mass of the plain people for 
whom he speaks." 

Having for twenty years been vindicated by the 
press, and now having the academic seal on his work, 



394 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

it would seem that the foes of Riley's dialect, "the 
mosquito-minded critics/' as Tarkington calls them, 
are seemingly left without occasion for their buzzing. 
It is scarcely wise any longer or popular to say that 
"his dialect poems are injuring Indiana's reputation 
for culture." The Hoosier parlance, which Riley sub- 
dued to rhyme, as William Dean Howells was wont to 
say, has not the consecration which time has given to 
the Scottish dialect in Burns, "but it says things as 
tenderly," adds Howells, "and as intimately, and on 
the lips of the Hoosier master it is music." 

Happily for the foes of dialect there is The Locker- 
hie Book, containing all the poems Riley wrote in 
normal English. A companion volume is The Hoosier 
Book, containing the poems in dialect — ^two volumes 
collected and arranged by the able editor of the Bobbs- 
Merrill Company, Hewitt Hanson Howland. The poet 
dreamed of a time when all his poems would be col- 
lected in one volume. The Lockerbie Book was in 
part the fulfillment of that dream, and one shares his 
joy over the fact that the collection should be the work 
of Mr. Howland, who had been associated with him 
ahnost daily for twenty years in a friendship which 
had never once been darkened by a passing cloud. 
The Lockerbie Book was rather a surprise to the 
literary public, — ^the poet's claim that he had done his 
greatest work in normal English. He had three great 
friends, W. D. Howells, Mark Twain and John Hay, 
who held that his dialect poems were equally great. 
Whether posterity will sustain that opinion must be 
left to the winnowing of time. Meanwhile friends of 
the poet everywhere will share his delight over The 
Lockerbie Book, "the volume for the cultivated 



IN THE HEAETS OF THE PEOPLE 395 

classes," he said, meaning particularly those who 
eschew dialect; for it has to be said that the persistent 
severity of their criticism had often caused him to 
pace the floor. 

A self-righteous few were for a long while con- 
cerned about the poet's salvation; and these also, at 
times, made the poet pace the floor. Once a revivalist, 
more ambitious than religious, gained entrance to 
Riley's room with a view to "saving his soul," as he 
termed it. Riley had been so busy writing poems that 
he had forgotten he had a soul, and he promptly let 
the intruder know it. The revivalist persisting, the 
poet picked up his Bible and said: "Let me read 
from the inspired word of Longfellow as recorded in 
*The New England Tragedies.'" Lovers of Long- 
fellow will surmise what he read — ^the sad picture of 
Poor Humanity turning from the narrow rules and 
the subtleties of the Schools and the bewildering cry, 
"lo, here ! lo, there ! the Church !" — ^turning back with 
bleeding feet 

"By the weary road it came 

Unto the simple thought 

By the great Master taught, 
And that remaineth still: 

Not he that repeateth the name 
But he that doeth the will." 

Widely different from the revivalist's was the atti- 
tude of the Church Federation of the poet's home city, 
in including him in its federated forces, "as a helpful 
interpreter of God and the humanities, and as a poetic 
preacher of goodness, kindness, mercy, and righteous- 
ness." As a minister said, "Riley made no formal 



396 JAMES WHITCOMB PJLEY 

profession of religious belief, but over and over again 
his trust in the Eternal Goodness found expression." 
That is fact, and it is good to record that a clergyman 
said it. ^'I am a Newlite," said Riley, "a Hicksite, a 
Methodist, a Probationer, a Publican, a Sinner; I be- 
long to the Great Church of Mankind. They (the 
clergymen) have their pulpits and I have mine. They 
in their province and I in my poor, unprofessional 
way are contributing to the redemption of the world." 

'In his sixties," said Hugh H. Hanna of Indian- 
apolis, "our poet was detained in Lockerbie Street to 
receive the plaudits of the press and the people" — Mb 
delicate way of referring to the poet's disability, in 
his summing up the unusual life-history. It was not 
for him, or any other friend of literature, so Mr. 
Hanna thought, to lament the invalid years, for the 
facts are that the poet was neither physically nor 
mentally active in that period. For six years he ex- 
perienced "the cords of affliction." His friends missed 
him along his daily walk in the shade of the trees 
between the Monument and Lockerbie Street. But he 
was seldom too feeble or despondent to joke about his 
affliction, saying "it was not thus with the Little Man 
in his debonair days, when he wore his tie under his 
left ear," and so forth. 

It Vv^as noteworthy that the poet could smile over 
what seemed to others his misfortune. Each winter 
he had sufficient strength to go to the warm coast of 
Florida, and seldom v/as there a summer afternoon in 
Indianapolis when he did not ride through the streets 
or out into the country, in his limousine, and greet his 
friends from its v/indow, with "the old twinkling re- 
sponse and the wave of the hand — ^the left hand." 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 397 

Fortunate he was in those paralytic days to have 
always at call his nephew, Edmund H. Eitel, the 
''Knightly Rider of the Knee" in Rhymes of Child- 
hood, who, grown to manhood, rendered the poet rare 
service as traveling companion, private secretary, and 
collector and editor of the Biographical Edition of the 
poet's works. 

In 1910 "the cords of affliction'' were drawn tighter. 
Thence to the end it seemed the people could not heap 
honors enough on their benefactor. The poet had 
accumulated a considerable fortune, although he had 
given freely, his most munificent gift being one of 
seventy-five thousand dollars to the Indianapolis Pub- 
lic Library. Thus, in the entrance to that institution, 
the bronze tablets with the following inscription: 

THESE GATES ARE THE GIFT 

OF THE 

CHILDREN OF INDIANAPOLIS 

IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE 

OF THEIR FRIEND 

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

With the opening of the year 1911 Riley was much 
concerned over the multiplicity of Riley celebrations. 
He had been the guest of honor on so many occasions 
that he began to grow uneasy. There was a pathetic 
side to applause. The public was fickle, and might 
some night when his friends were napping, snatch 
him down from his pedestal. The truth was that all 
along the way he had wondered over so much demon- 
stration. "It makes a fellow feel mighty humble 
when folks do things like this,'* he said of his reception 



398 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

at the World's Fair. After receiving his Yale degree 
he said, *1 just wanted to get behind the door and hide 
myself/' 

''Just the humblest of humble servants," he said, 
after his election to membership in the American 
Academy of Arts and Letters, and his reception of the 
gold medal for poetry; "I want to get down on my 
marrow-bones and never, imver hug myself again." 

Still the avowals of public affection continued. At 
a state convention in 1910, the Indiana Federation of 
Women's Clubs, acting on a resolution introduced by 
Mrs. Minnie Belle Mitchell of Greenfield, had voted to 
celebrate the poet's birthday. The school authorities, 
being in sympathy with the movement, instructed the 
teachers and children of Indiana to observe October 
seventh as Riley Day. When, the next year, the poet 
discovered that the state was serious about the cele- 
bration, he addressed a letter to the children of his 
home city, who were revealing the year of his birth, 
which he had kept secret since his young manhood: 

528 Lockerbie Street. 
To the School Children of Indianapolis : 

You are conspirators — every one of you, that's what 
you are — you have conspired to inform the general 
public of my birthday, and I am already so old that I 
want to forget all about it. But I will be magnani- 
mous and forgive you, for I know that your intent is 
really friendly, and to have such friends as you are 
makes me — don't care how old I am ! In fact it makes 
me so glad and happy that I feel as absolutely young 
and spry as a very schoolboy— even as one of you — 
and so to all intents I am. 

Therefore let me be with you throughout the long, 
lovely day, and share your mingled joys and blessings 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 399 

with your parents and your teachers. "God bless us 
every one." 

Ever gratefully and faithfully, 

Your old friend, 
James Whitcomb Riley. 

The * 'conspirators" had so successfully done their 
work that serenades became the fashion in Lockerbie 
Street. There came also to the poet congratulatory 
messages from other states and from Canada — one 
from the school authorities of Kentucky, and another 
from the superintendent of the bureau of libraries of 
New York State to the effect that five hundred thou- 
sand children were ready to participate in the observ- 
ance of Riley Day. 

His greeting for 1912 was addressed to children 
everywhere : 

528 Lockerbie Street. 
To the School Children Generally : 

It may be well for you to remember that the day 
you are about to celebrate is the birthday of many 
good men, but if I may be counted the least of these, 
I will be utterly content and happy. I can only thank 
you and your teachers with a full heart and the fer- 
vent hope that the day will prove an equal glory to us 
all. 

To the Very Little Children: 

I would say — be simply yourselves, and though even 
parents, as I sometimes think — do not seem to under- 
stand us perfectly, we will be patient with them and 
love them no less loyally and very tenderly. 

Most truly your hale friend and comrade, 

James Whitcomb Riley. 



400 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Friendly authors contributed to the general enthusi- 
asm. Meredith Nicholson congratulated the children 
on the fact that poetry had not gone out of fashion. 
"It is a great thing," he said, **to have living among 
us a man who has sent his messages of faith and confi- 
dence into the minds and hearts of people in every 
part of the world." 

A characteristic word to the Indianapolis Star, 
dated October 6, 1912, came from our "Modem ^sop/' 
of Brook, Indiana : 

Our own Riley is the one distinguished son of 
Indiana whose life and works are the very essence 
of the Hoosier State. Benjamin Harrison might have 
been a Bostonian. General Lew Wallace might have 
been a New Yorker. Booth Tarkington, with his tales 
of chivalry and tender sentiment, might have come 
out from Virginia. But Riley could not have been 
anything but a Hoosier, and possibly it was pre- 
ordained a thousand years ago that he should be born 
in Greenfield. He has known his friends and neigh- 
bors to the very core, and he has revealed them to us 
with literary skill, combined with drollery, humor, 
honest philosophy, and kindness of heart. 

One can not know the plain people of Indiana ex- 
cept by living among them all his life and reading 
Riley. The man's evasion of all dress parades of 
literature, his quiet contempt for ceremonies and dis- 
plays, and his real sympathy for everything humble 
and genuine, regardless of labels, have endeared him 
to us. When such a rare soul is also one of the few 
masters of verse it is not surprising that the whole 
state wishes to do him honor. 

George Ade. 

The next year Anderson, Indiana, gave to the poet 
the keys to the city. For a quarter-century he had 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 401 

been disinclined to any public appearance there, not 
being able to dismiss from memory recollections of the 
Poe Poem, and his heart-breaking failure in an enter- 
tainment at the old Union Hall, as well as his obscure 
departure from the town. 

But there came a day when all things in the way of 
a reception to him were written in capitals and italics, 

"When forgetting all the sorrow 

He had had, 
He could fold away his fears, 
And put by his foolish tears. 
And through all the coming years 

Just be glad" — 

a day when he read from his books, a grand ovation 
at the Grand Opera House, a sympathetic audience 
that overflowed on the stage, a demand for seats that 
exceeded the supply by one thousand, a disappointed 
audience outside so large and persistent that the police 
had to guard the aisles and doorways — an evening 
when newspaper representatives and traction car 
delegations came from neighboring towns, when chil- 
dren brought bouquets to the footlights, and Ander- 
son presented her guest a loving cup. 

Was there anything more that Anderson could do? 
There was — so much more that the ovation at the 
Grand had to take second place. The first week in 
June, 1913, the industrial, commercial, educational, 
fraternal, and municipal interests of the city joined 
in a "Made-in-Anderson" exhibition, and not for- 
getting that the city had conspicuously contributed to 
the making of a poet, Tuesday was set apart as Riley 
Day. 



402 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

The poet went to Anderson in his automobile, ac- 
companied by friends, and all along the road the 
farmers and their families gathered at gateways to 
see him pass. Leading citizens of Anderson met him 
at Pendleton, and from there, a distance of eight miles, 
it was a procession of automobiles with the poet's car 
in the lead. In West Eighth Street the children of the 
city greeted him, and as he passed literally covered 
him and his machine with flowers. 

In front of the Court House the throng of welcomers 
was so dense that the poet's car v/as stopped. Almost 
overpowered with the tenderness of his welcome, he 
rose in his car and in a voice tremulous with emotion, 
said: "Citizens of Anderson, and you, little children, 
who have so wonderfully greeted me, I have no words 
to express to you what is in my heart at this moment. 
This is the happiest day of my life. I thank you for 
your generous welcome. I thank you for your beauti- 
ful flowers. With all my heart, I thank you — I thank 
you." 

When at the conclusion of the celebration the poet 
left for home, his automobile was bedecked with 
strands of red clover plucked from fields he had 
strolled over in youth. Flowers and bouquets from 
the homes of old-time friends were tossed into the car, 
and as he drove away, his face aglow with gratitude, 
he murmured: "A wonderful day; one of God's won- 
derful days V* 

In November, on his way south, the poet was de- 
tained in Cincinnati, where several thousand school 
children brought flowers to his reception in Music 
Hall. On his birthday a month before, nearly three 
thousand children had marched in parade through 




Fbom a Photograph of the Poet in His Latter Years — 1913 




Henry Watterson — Age Seventy-eight — Staunch Friend of 
THE Poet for Thirty Years 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 403 

Lockerbie Street. Is it any wonder that his poem, 
"Dream-March,'* came with its army of fairy ban- 
ners to vivify his sunset days? Brave boys and girls 
marching out of Morning-Land, turning never home 
again — only in dreams — 

''Where go the children? Travelling! Travelling! 
Where go the children, travelling ahead? 
Some go to conquer things ; some go to try them ; 
Some go to dream them; and some go to bed." 

On the approach of the birthday, 1915, there came 
a proclamation from the Governor, the only one of its 
kind in the annals of literature. After briefly re- 
ferring to the poet's history, the proclamation said : 

"Whether the arch above his head was at times one 
of sunshine or one of cloud, all recognized that in the 
depths of his soul there was love for his fellowman 
and adoration for his God. Whether he was painting 
signs or writing verses, the people were his study. 
He familiarized himself with their manners and cus- 
toms and characteristics, and with melody and sweet- 
ness and a singular gift of invention, he told them 
things about themselves they did not know. This is 
why they have always loved him. 

"More than any other citizen of Indiana, James 
Whitcomb Riley has carried the fame of his native 
state into the schools and hom_es of the world. It is 
not strange therefore that there should be a wide- 
spread feeling among our people that the anniversary 
of his birth should be celebrated in honor of his poetic 
genius and his literary achievements, and in recog- 
nition of his contributions to society. 

"He is the children's poet, and he has become such 
because he has so much of the spirit of the One who 
said, Suffer little children to come unto me. All Indi- 



404 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

ana will rejoice therefore to see her children afforded 
an opportunity to place their heart wreaths upon his 
brow and strew their flowers about his feet. 

''Now, therefore, I, Samuel M. Ralston, as Governor 
of the State of Indiana, hereby designate and pro- 
claim the seventh day of October, A. D., 1915, the 
anniversary of the birth of James Whitcomb Riley, as 
Riley Day; and I urge all the people of the state to 
arrange in their respective communities, in their own 
way, appropriate public exercises in their schools and 
at their other public meeting places; and that they 
display the American flag at their homes and places 
of business on this day, in honor of Indiana's most 
beloved citizen." 

There came also a word from the National Com- 
missioner of Education, who had directed that the 
seventh of October be observed as Riley Day by all 
of the Public, Private, and Parochial Schools of the 
United States. This word and the governor's procla- 
mation lifted the poet into the seventh heaven of de- 
light, and he did not hesitate to let his near friends 
know his feeling. Equally delighted he was over an 
editorial in the Christian Science Monitor. That Indi- 
ana proposed to recognize a poet formally was, ac- 
cording to the Boston daily, something new in history, 
something that Massachusetts never did for Ralph 
Waldo Emerson or Henry W. Longfellow, or New 
York for William Cullen Bryant. The paper went on 
to institute a comparison between Riley and Lincoln. 
While Riley's courage and good will had shown in less 
conspicuous ways than Lincoln's, it had also been ad- 
mirable, and as Indiana honored her son the nation 
would look on approvingly. 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 405 

"You have to think of Riley in his right setting," 
said the Monitor, *'doing much the same humanizing 
work as a poet, that Lincoln did as a statesman, and 
with the same instruments — pathos, humor, and sin- 
cere love of men as men." 

Applause for the poet was at high tide in Indian- 
apolis, October 7, 1915. During the day messages 
came to Lockerbie Street from the length and breadth 
of the land, an exceptional one from the office of 
Secretary Fl-anklin K. Lane, head of the Federal 
Bureau of Education, telling of the nation-wide cele- 
bration of the poet's birthday by the school children. 
By nation-wide was not meant that the celebrations 
were formal in all states and cities. They were in- 
formal, for instance, in Chicago, St. Paul, and at the 
Panama Exposition, San Francisco; and formal in 
West Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida, Washington City, 
and Pittsburgh, three thousand teachers in the latter 
city heartily joining in the exercises, while eighty 
thousand children, so the message read, tuned their 
hearts to the lines of *'The Old Swimmin'-Hole" and 
"The Raggedy Man." With other felicitations came 
cable messages from Europe — from Walter H. Page 
in London, Brand Whitlock in Belgium, and Henry 
Van Dyke in the Netherlands. 

National interest in the anniversary centered in a 
banquet in the poet's honor in what has since been 
called the Riley Room in the Claypool Hotel, Indian- 
apolis. The banquet had been recommended by a gen- 
eral committee of more than one hundred prominent 
citizens, Charles Warren Fairbanks being the chair- 
man and also the toastmaster on the occasion. 



406 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

In one particular at least the Riley banquet differed 
from many others; the committee did not have to beg 
for guests. Although there were four hundred plates 
at ten dollars a plate, the demand exceeded the supply 
by hundreds. As Walt Mason wrote in his fluent way, 
*lf all who love him could be there, to greet the bard 
beyond compare, they'd need a banquet hall so great, 
that it would reach across the state." 

The speakers and the toasts to which they responded 
were as follows: 

Governor Samuel M. Ralston — "The State of Indiana." 
Colonel George Harvey — **Why Is James Whitcomb 

Riley?" 
Doctor John H. Finley — 'Trom Cadmus to Riley." 
Young E. Allison — ''Our Southern Cousins." 
Albert J. Beveridge — "Friendship." 
William Allen White— "The Day We Celebrate." 
George Ade— "The Center Table." 
Senator John W. Kern — "Riley in the Making." 

"This great banquet, my friends," said Vice-Presi- 
dent Fairbanks, before introducing the speakers, 
"graced by so many men who have achieved distinc- 
tion in the world of letters, statesmanship, religion, 
education, business, and other honorable spheres in 
every walk of life, is a spontaneous creation; it had 
its origin in spontaneity, which emphasizes its signifi- 
cance; it sprang out of a universal desire to pay 
homage to one of the most gifted among us — a friend 
and benefactor of his day and generation. It is a 
happy circumstance that our governor has by execu- 
tive proclamation set aside to-day as Riley Day in 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 407 

Indiana. It is significant also that the day is being: 
celebrated in the schools of other states. This is a 
distinction as deserved as it is unique. The heart of 
millions of our countrymen have been touched by his 
poems, and the influence of the Hoosier Poet will go 
on as the years pass in stately procession. James 
Whitcomb Riley is in truth the uncrowned king of 
young America. He is their idol; the fragrance of 
his wholesome influence has become a part of their 
lives.'^ 

That all the speakers would be warmly greeted on 
an occasion that was keyed to the highest pitch of 
sympathetic enthusiasm, was a foregone conclusion. 
At the close of his speech. Senator Kern, on behalf of 
the Union Soldiers of Indiana, presented to the poet a 
beautiful silk flag, made especially for the celebration. 

Referring to the unexampled success of the ban- 
quet, William Fortune of the Indianapolis Chamber 
of Commerce said: "I have never known anything 
like the feeling that has characterized the whole under- 
taking. With his great gifts of expression, Mr. Riley 
seems to find words quite inadequate. It is of course 
unnecessary for him to say anything. The people are 
merely responding to what he has been so beautifully 
saying for them all through his life." 

Yet the poet — with wavering voice under the 
pressure of deep emotions — did contrive to say some^ 
thing. 

''Then came the climax of a perfect evening," says 
the press report, **Mr. Riley's own tribute to friends, 
old and new, many of the old among the departed, but 
still tenderly remembered. The poet was greeted 
with the warmth that marks well the affection in 



408 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

which he is held everywhere. The guests stood and 
voiced their feelings in a happy salutation." 

After eulogizing the friends departed the poet said : 
"And there is a gladness all along the line, from the 
first immortal entrance of jovial character to the very 
present company to-night — ^the faces all filled with the 
like pleasure and happiness. And to this presence 
here I make my glad obeisance and my thanks as well 
to those friends in alien quarters who have so kindly 
sent their words of cheer and Godspeed. And the 
distinguished guests who have spoken in tribute here 
may be sure of my most feeling gratitude. 

"And may I express particular appreciation for the 
words of the President of our beloved country, who 
has found opportunity in the stress and worry of these 
imperiled times to remember and to honor us with his 
participancy in the spirit of the hour. And no less 
are we all grateful for the message of Mr. Howells, 
our master of letters — the master, worthy as beloved, 
and beloved as worthy. 

"To him, to these, to all you and every one — I thank 
you — and, in the words of little Tim Cratchit, *God 
bless us every one.' " 

Since the poet mentioned with particular apprecia- 
tion Mr. Howells and the President, their greetings 
follow in full: 

York Harbor, Maine, September 5, 1915. 
I would gladly come to the Riley-Fest if I were not 
so nearly seventy-nine years old, with all the accumu- 
lated abhorrences of joyful occasions which that lapse 
of time implies. But I can not really be away when- 
ever Riley is spoken of. Give him my dearest love 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 409 

and all such honor as one of the least may offer one of 
the greatest of our poets. 

William Dean Howells. 

The White House, Washington, September 1, 1915. 

I am sorry to say it will not be possible for me to 
be present at the banquet which the citizens of Indi- 
anapolis are planning to give in honor of James Whit- 
comb Riley; but I want to ask you if you will not be 
generous enough to convey to Mr. Riley on that occa- 
sion a message of cordial regard and admiration from 
me. I wish that I might be present to render my 
tribute of affectionate appreciation to him for the 
many pleasures he has given me, along with the rest 
of the great body of readers of English. I think he 
has every reason to feel on his birthday that he has 
won the hearts of his countrymen. 

WooDROW Wilson. 

If there was ever any danger that local pride would 
'^distort the view and magnify beyond recognition the 
object of the eulogy," that danger vanished in the flood 
of congratulations on the poet's last birthday. After 
the banquet it could be truly said that love for him 
was national and the voice of eulogy American. 
Carolyn Wells could list him "in the very small group 
who have earned the right to sit on the classic step 
between the sublime and the ridiculous," and Meredith 
Nicholson could af!irm that **Riley is the cheeriest and 
hopefulest spirit in American literature," and Robert 
Underwood Johnson could say that the Riley songs 
"were drawn from the deepest wells of human experi- 
ence," and Henry Watterson wrote: 

Louisville, October 5, 1915. 
No one can have approved the proceedings more 
heartily than myself. Honors like this rarely come to 



410 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

a living man — never before came to any poet, living 
or dead. If any lure could tempt me from a resolution 
not to impose myself on my audience, it v/ould be this 
occasion, the call to join in fitting and willing homage 
to an old friend. In Kentucky's name I send Ken- 
tucky's greeting. Your Governor has done something 
more than distinguish himself, in reinvoking the 
Golden Age of Song and reminding the world that 
there is poetry as w^ell as life in the old land yet. The 
official designation of the seventh of October as Riley 
Day celebrates the state of Indiana hardly less than 
Riley himself, Indiana's best-beloved citizen. 

More than any American poet Riley will live as the 
people's poet. With Burns of Scotland, and Beranger 
of France, he already forms a blessed and immortal 
trinity, which will carry the folk songs of three races 
to after ages, Vv^hen the versifiers of the highbrows are 
forgotten. Reading Riley — drinking the while a toast 
to the day — the world may feel, and even above the 
clash of arms may exultant shout: "There is yet a 
little sugar in the bottom of the glass." 

God be with you and may Riley Day become peren- 
nial. 

Henry Watterson. 

In 1906 Riley remarked that he would not live to 
see sixty. Five years later, in his sixty-second year, 
after a paralytic stroke, he said, "I have finished my 
work; my end has come." The news traveled over 
the wires and newspapers everywhere prepared their 
obituaries. 

But the end did not come. A month before the din- 
ner in his honor, he said cheerfully, "I feel like a boy. 
I have not felt so strong in years. I drive out in my 
car and am enjoying life in spite of the war in 
Europe/' He went on to say that he had quit read- 



IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE 411 

ing the newspapers that he might avoid the story of 
pain and weeping. 

Some forty years before the banquet, an obscure 
country weekly took notice of an initial paper in the 
Earlhamite by J. W. Riley, '*a poem by a Hoosier poet 
unknown to fame," ran the item, **which betrays the 
touch of genius in every line." Whoever wrote the 
item judged truly. The poem was "Fame," in which 
the poetic deity comes tardily through the door to 
crown a homeless, lifeless artist and sculptor. Then 
gazing down a dismal vista the poet regards the fate 
of all poets, lonely wandering, aimlessly journeying 
on through life without even a kindly touch for the 
burning brov/, and the end a dreary defeat: 

"And this is Fame! A thing indeed, 
That only comes when least the need: 
The wisest minds of every age 
The book of life from page to page 
Have searched in vain; each lesson conned 
Will promise it the page beyond." 

How really different was the journey's end for 
Riley ! 

After passing his sixty-sixth milestone, he was 
feeling so much like a boy that time seemed to promise 
"many returns of the day." He went south as usual 
to Miami, Florida, for the winter, and in May returned 
to Indianapolis and his daily rides about the city, well 
and happy with apparently many days of quiet con- 
tentment before him. But the end was not far away, 
for on Saturday night, July twenty-second, at ten 
minutes of eleven, the poet, having retired, asked for 



412 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

a glass of water and turning on his side fell asleep. 
As gently as twilight comes, came the summons from 
the Silent Land. 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 

Abbott, Lyman, 220. 

Ade, George, 228, 384, 400, 406. 

Adjustable Lunatic, 324. 

After ichiles : 205; publication (1887), 226, ST4, 280, 337, 346, 350. 

Agassiz, Louis, 339. 

Alcott, Bronson, 71, 267. 

Aldrich, Tliomas Bailey, 180, 277. 

Alexander, D. S., 30, 77-8. 

Allison, Young E., 406. 

American 'Notes, 224. 

Anderson, Indiana, 14-7. 

Anderson Democrat, 17, 59, 315, 322. 

Anderson Herald, 17. 

Anderson, Mary, 13, 244, 287. 

Andrews, Mrs. M. L., 229. 

Armazmdy, 345-6, 350. 

Arnold, Matthew, 191-5. 

Assassin, The, 345. 

Atlanta Constitution, criticism of Riley, 279. 

Atlantic Monthly, The, 118, 135-7. 

At Rest, 205. 

August, 53, 347. 

Autumn Leaves Is Falling, The, 253. 

Autumnal Extravaganza, An, 32. 

Away, composition of, 326, 

Babyhood, 30, 32. 
Ban, The, 146. 

Bard of Deer Greek, The, 202. 
Bates, Henry, 94. 

Bear Story, The: 78, 88, 94; source, 349. 
Beautiful City, The, 202, 329. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 327. 
Beers, Henry A., 391. 
Beetle, The, 25-6. 
Being a Boy, 280. 

Benefit for Actors' Fund (Nov. 15, 1888), 244. 
Bereaved: 271 ; composition of, 325. 
Beveridge, Albert J., 406. 
Billings, Josh. See Josh Billings. 
Billy Could Ride, 203, 207. 
Biographical Edition of Riley, 345. 

415 



416 INDEX 

Blake, William, influence on Riley, 319-20. 

Bloomington, Indiana, 47. 

Blossoms in the Trees, 202. 

Blue Bird, The, 368. 

Blue Grass Club of Louisville, Ky., 263. 

Bobbs-Merrill Company, The, 211, 345, 394. 

Bobbs, William C, 347. 

Bolton, Mrs. Sarah T., 135. 

Booh of Joyous Children, 345, 349. 

Boone County Pastoral, A, 151. 

Booth, Franklin, Edition of Flying Islands, 347. 

Boss Girl, The: 209-14 ; circular about, 212. 

Boston Advertiser, The, 30. 

Boston Pilot, The, 135, 155. 

Bottsford, Louise, 115. 

Bowen-Merrill Company, 345. 

Boy from Zeeny, The, 70, 228, 288. 

Boys, The, 202. 

Brave Love, 82. 

Bret Harte of Indiana, The, 94. 

Bride, A, 25. 

British Painters, 319. 

Bryan, William Lowe, 94. 

Bryant, William C, 328, 404. 

Bryce, J. Burt. 35. 

Burdette, Robert J. : 44-52, 143, 151, 153, 165, 183, 184, 234, 263 

criticism of Lockerbie Street, 292, 340. 
Burlington Hawkeye, 48, 143. 
Burns, Robert, 6, 83, 332, 394. 
BuziS Cluh Papers, 7, 34, 36. 

Cable, George W., 215, 222, 234, 242. 

Caller from Boone, A, 149-50. 

Cambridge City, Indiana, 97. 

Carman, Bliss, 275, 203. 

Carnegie, Andrew, 305. 

Carpenter, Frank G., 269, 293. 

Carr, George, 59-60. 

Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 27-9, 102, 131, 171, 225. 

Cawein, Madison, 266, 335. 

Century Magazine, The, 137, 165-6, 297, 326. 

Champion Checker Player of Ameriky, The, 96. 

Characteristics of Hoosier Dialect, 187. 

Characteristics of Western Humor, 201. 

Chicago Herald, editorial on Riley, 308-9. 

Chicago Inter-Ocean, 361-2. 

Chicago Mail, 260. 

Chicago Record-Herald, 390. 



INDEX 417 

Chicago Tribune, 77. 

Chickering Hall (N. Y. C), 215, 220, 242. 

Child of Waterloo, A, 3. 

Child's Home Long Ago, A, 208. 

Child Rhymes, 346. 

Child World, A: 345, 348-9; published in London, 350-351. 

Chimney Corner, The, 3, 292. 

Christian Science Monitor, 404. 

Christine Braidly (pen-name of Mrs. Catherwood), 28-9. 

Christy, Howard Chandler, 346. 

Christy-Riley Series, 347. 

Cincinnati Post, 386-7. 

Claypool Hotel (Indianapolis), 405. 

Clemens, Samuel : 215 ; letter to Foulke about Riley at W. A. W. 

dinner, 1888, 231 ; see MarJc Twain. 
Clickwad, Mr., 34-7. 
Clover, The, 155. 
Coburn, General John, 53. 
Collyer, Robert, 220. 
Coon Dog Wess, 312. 
Copyright League program, 220. 
CoqueUn, 369. 

Counter fitters' Nest, The, 154. 
Country Pathway, A, 347. 
Cow Phenomenon, 234. 
Craqueodoom, explanation of, 322-4. 
Crawfordsville, Indiana, 14. 
Crosby, Dr. Howard, 222. 

Croic's Nest, The, Riley's study, 105-6, 277, 317. 
Curly Locks, 207. 
Curtis, George W., letter about Riley at W. A. W. dinner, 1888, 

231, 274. 

Dallas, Mary Kyle, 82. 

Daly, Augustine, 2, 242. 

Dana, Charles A. : influence on Riley, 125-30; letters, 127, 130, 851; 

letter, 352. 
Dunhury News Man, The, 18. 
Dan Paine: 32 ; quoted, 249. 
Dave Field, 207. 
Davis, John, 369. 
Dawn, 31. 

Dead in Sight of Fame, 56. 

Dead Rose (Riley's study), 104, 107, 109, 113, 116, 277. 
Dead Selves, 54. 
Dead Wife, The, 197. 
Debs, Eugene V., 258. 
Decoration Day on the Place, 360. 



418 INDEX 

Deer Crick, 234. 

Denison House (Indianapolis), 286. 

Denver Times, The, 393. 

Dialect in Literature (paper in 1890), 281-2. 

Dickens, Charles : 8, 107 ; influence on Riley, 172, 319, 349, 388, 38 

Dickenson's Grand Opera House (Indianapolis), 96. 

Dicktown Wonder, The, 188. 

Divine Emhlem.s, 158. 

Dodds, Mary L., 138-9. 

Dooley, Mr., 305. 

Dot Leedle Boy of Mine, 86, 347. 

Dream of Autumn, A, 32. 

Dreams, 125. 

Dumas, Alexandre, 287. 

Dunbar, Hamilton J., 56. 

Dunbar House, 101. 

Durbin, Gk)V. Winfield T., 365. 

Dusk, 31. 

Earlhamite, The, 411. 

Eccentric Mr. Clark, The, 70. 

Eccentricities of Western Humor, The, 187. 

Eitel, Edmund H., 397. 

Eitel, Henry, 226, 276. 

Eli and Hoiv He Got There, 186. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 304, 335, 404. 

Enduring, The, 277. 

Envoy, quoted, 350. 

Fairbanks, Charles W. : 383, 405 ; tribute to Riley, 406-7. 

Fame, 53, 101, 125, 211, 411. 

Farm Rhymes, 346. 

Farmer Whipple — Bachelor, 8, 82, 223, 347. 

Fessler's Bees, 234. 

Field, Eugene, 121, 234, 257. 

Finley, John H., 406. 

Fishback, William P., 261-2. 

Flying Islands of the Night, The, 33, 34, 36-8, 128, 142, 322, 345. 

Forsaken Merman, The, 191. 

Fortune, William, 407. 

Foster, John W., 365. 

Foulke, William Dudley, 229. 

Frog, The, 315. 

From Delphi, 203. 

Frost on the Punkin, The, 312. 

Funny Little Fellow, The, 48-9. 

Garfield, James A., 345. 



INDEX 419 

Garland, Hamlin : criticism of Aftcrwhiles, 226, 269. 

Giant on the Show-Bills, The, 70. 

Gilder, Jeanette, 221. 

Glenarm Club (Denver), 263. 

Glimpse of Pan, 335. 

Girl I Loved, The, 347. 

God Bless Us Every One, 32. 

Gould, Judge J. H., 205. 

Grand Opera House entertainment, 1888, (Indianapolis), 227-8. 

Grand, Point, 222. 

Grant, 205. 

Grant, Ulysses S., death, 205-7, 266, 362. 

Grant and Colfax campaign {see Vol. I), 203. 

Greeley, Horace, 241. 

Greenfield Commercial, 8. 

Greenfield Dramatic Club, 5. 

Green Fields and Running BrooTcs, 345, 348. 

Griggsly's Station, 207, 370. 

Hadley, Arthur T., 390. 

Half ord, Elijah W., 67, 227. 

Hancock Democrat, 155. 

Hanna, Hugh H., 396. 

Happy Little Cripple, The, 176. 

Harding, George, 64, 93. 

Harelip, The, 217. 

Harper, The, 329. 

Harper's Monthly, 135, 137. 

Harris, Captain, 373. 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 232, 304, 333. 

Harrison, Benjamin, 67, 229, 248, 363. 

Harry Gilbert Company, 4. 

Harte, Bret : 18, 83 ; on choosing a profession, 330, 333. 

Harvey, George, 406. 

Hay, John : letter to Riley, 83 ; advice to Riley, 274 ; letter about 

Rhymes of Childhood, 284 ; 394. 
Hays, Dr. Franklin W., 104. 
Her Beautiful Hands, 36, 254, 329, 347. 
Herr Weiser, 204. 
His Pa's Romance, 345. 
Hitt, George C, 159-60, 174, 180, 211. 
Holland, J. G., 309. 
Holstein, Major Charles L., 298, 341. 
Home Again with Me, 347. 
Home Folks, 345. 
Home, Sv^eet Home, 277. 
Homestead Edition, 150, 345. 
Home Voyage, The, 357. 



420 INDEX 

Mo'^e, 144-5. 

Hoosier Book, The, 394. 
Hough, Judge (Greenfield), 130. 
Hoio Dutch Frank Found His Voice, 254. 
Howe, Julia Ward, 378-9. 

Howells, William Dean: 136, 180, 215, 273; criticism of Rhymes 
of Childhood, 283 ; 394 ; letter to Riley on birthday, 1915, 408. 
Howland, Hewitt Hanson, 394. 
Howland, Livingstone, 261-2. 
Hubbard, Elbert, 332. 
Euckleherry Finn, 200. 
Hunchley, Mr., 34. 
Hunt, Leigh, 108, 111. 
Hut of Refuge, The, 103-4. 

If I Knew What the Poets Know^ 31. 

Ike Walton's Prayer, 207. 

In the Dark, 56. 

Indianapolis, 47. 

Indianapolis Journal, 51, 54, 56-76, 80, 89, 101, 103, 104, 113, 146, 

150-3, 157, 199, 207, 226-7, 291, 314, 345-6, 389. 
Indianapolis Literary Club's reception for Riley, 260-1. 
Indianapolis 'News, 26, 93, 249, 290. 
Indianapolis people, 37. 

Indianapolis Saturday Herald, 23, 31-9, 60, 64, 90, 93, 144, 226. 
Indianapolis Sentinel, 92. 
Indianapolis Star, 400. 
International Copyright League, 215. 
Iron Horse, The, 347. 
Irving, Henry, 242, 369. 

JacoJ) Hind's Child, motif, 309-10. 

James Whipcord Riley, 294. 

Jamesy, 61. 

Jefferson, Joseph, 13. 

Jimpsy, 294. 

Johnson, Benjamin F., of Boone, 146, 148-56, 170, 360. 

Johnson, Robert Underwood, 165, 409. 

Johnson, Samuel, 316. 

Jones, Joseph Levering, tribute to Riley, 392. 

Jones, Roselind, 146. 

Josh Billings: 18; letter to Riley, 185; Riley's poem on, 186, 195. 

June at Woodruff, 271. 

Kansas City Star, 260. 
Keats, John, 33. 
Kern, John W., 406-7. 
Kickshaws, 119. 



INDEX 421 

Kingry's Mill, 187. 

Kipling, Rudyard : 109, 269; letter to RUey, 311, 371. 

Kissing the Rod, 271. 

Knee-deep i7i June: 187, 202; criticism by Lowell, 224. 

Knight, Joseph: 83; comment on Riley, 314. 

Kokomo Dispatch, 20, 23, 25, 27-33. 

Kokomo Tribune, 43, 119, 143. 

La-Ker-Me, quoted, 298. 

Landis, Charles B., introduction of Riley, 385. 

Lane, Franklin K., 405 

Lang, Andrew, 287. 

Lanier House, 245. 

Lebanon, Indiana, 74. 

Legend Glorified, The, 329. 

LeRoy Kingen, 294. 

Let Something Good Be Said, 55. 

Lewis ville, Indiana, 19. 

Life Lesson, A, 114. 

Lily-Bud, 375. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 332. 

LippincotVs Magazine, 137. 

Little Attenuated Capability, The, 18T. 

Little Man in the Tin Shop, The, 263. 

Little Oak Man, The, 294. 

Utile Orphant Annie, 117, 228, 370, 384. 

Little Red Apple Tree, The, 271. 

Little Tommy Smith, 96. 

Little Town of Tailholt, The, 32. 

Lockerhie Book, The, 394. 

Lockerbie Street (1893), 289-99. 

LockerUe Street: quoted, 290; composition and publication, 291-2; 

quoted, 299. 
Locomotive Fireman's Magazine, 23. 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 390. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 30, 42, 148, 178, 302, 308, 316, 329, 

368, 376, 389, 395, 404. 
Lost Love, A, 25. 
Lost Path, The, 40. 
Lowell, James Russell, 152, 215-9, 221, ^4-5. 

McCutcheon, George Barr, 229, 384. 

Macauley, Daniel, 89, 93, 178. 

Macy, A. W., 101. 

Mahala Ashcraft, 312. 

Major, Charles, 384. 

Man without a Country, A, 353. 

Marion, Francis, 140. 



422 INDEX 

Marion, Indiana, 2. 

Mark Twain : 18, 164, 187, 234 ; How to Tell a Story, 247, 333, 361, 

391, 394. (See Samuel Clemens.) 
Martindale, E. B. : 56; letter to Riley, 57, 58, 60-1, 65. 
Mason, Walt, 406. 

Matthews, Newton, 156, 213, 216, 271. 
Memorial Edition of Riley, 346. 
Mercury, 142-3. 

Merrill, Meigs & Company, 161. 
Miles' Restaurant, 64. 
Mishaivaka Enterprise, 144. 
Mitchell, Mrs. Minnie Belle, 398. 
'Mongst the Hills o' Somerset, 254. 
Monrovia, Indiana, Riley at, 9-13. 
Monument for Soldiers, A, quoted, 366. 
Moon-Drotvned, 32. 
Mooresville Herald, 9. 

Morgue, The, 102-3, 107, 109-11, 115, 121, 277, 317. 
Morning, 345. 
Morton, Oliver P., 326. 
Mother-Song, A, 40. 
Mr. Bryce, 7. 

Mr. Trillpipe on Puns, 7L 
My Bride That Is to Be, 40. 
My First Spectacles, 116. 
My Henry, 25, 27. 
My Hot Displeasure, 189-90. 
My Old Friend William Leachman, 154. 
My Philosophy, 199. 
Myers, W. R., 122. 

Name of Old Glory, The, 278, 393. 

Nasby, Petroleum V., 18. 

Neghhorly Poems, 156, 344-5, 391. 

New England Tragedies, The, 395. 

New, Harry S., 66-7. 

New, John C, 71. 

Neio York Evening Post, 30. 

New York Independent, 23. 

Neio York Sun: 125, 127, 130; criticism of Riley, 223, 351. 

New York Tribune', 27. 

New York World, 222, 239, 264. 

Newcastle Mercury, 23, 30-1. 

Nicholas, Anna, 67, 169, 314, 331. 

Nicholson, Meredith, 228, 269, 384, 393, 400, 409. 

Night, 31. 

No Boy Knows When He Goes to Sleep, 392. 

Nothing to Say, 116, 137, 222, 238. 



INDEX 423 

Nye, "Bill" : 64, 216 ; letter to Riley, 217 ; criticism of Afterwhiles, 
226 ; at Indianapolis, 235 ; at Danville, 111., 236 ; characteri- 
zation of Riley, 237, 243, 254, 259, 289, 306, 376. 

Nye, Frank M., 348. 

01)ject Lesson, The, 51, 77, 86-8 ; 94, 196, 222. 
Ode on the Death of the Duke of WelUngton, 206. 
Ode to Thomas A. Hendricks, 279. 
Old Band, The, 254. 

Old-Fashioned Roses, 32, 59, 84-5, 254, 372. 
Old Fiddler, The, 70. 
Old Man and Jim, The, 228, 361. 
Old Settler's Story, The, 343. 
Old Soldier's Story, The, 187, 245. 
Old Sweetheart of Mine, An, 57, 82, 101, 125, 346, 375. 
Old Swimmin' Hole, and 'Lev en More Poems, The: 151 ; publica- 
tion, 159-60 ; preface, 162 ; contents, 163 ; 197, 201, 209, 222. 
On the Banks o' Deer Crick, 207-8. 
Open Letter, quoted, 317. 
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 155, 178, 180, 230. 
O'Rell, Max, comment on Riley, 242. 
Our Kind of Man, 205. 
Out to Old Aunt Mary's, 242, 347. 

Page, Walter H., 405. 

Paine, Albert Bigelow, 68. 

Paine, Dan : 26 ; letter to Riley, 248, 347. 

Papyrus Club, 179. 

Parker, Benjamin S., 30-1, 38, 71, 142, 229, 317. 

Park Theater Benefit (1879), 227. 

Parkhurst, Charles L., 220. 

Passing of a Heart, The, 25. 

Payne, John Howard, 277. 

Peace Hymn of the Republic, The, composition of, 379. 

Peoria Call, The, 24-5, 30. 

Perkins, Eli, 18. 

Perrin, Bernadotte, 389. 

Phelps, William Lyon, admiration of Riley, 391. 

Philips, Charles, 42. 

Phillips, Wendell, 179. 

Pipes 0' Pan, 254, 337, 343. 

Pittsburgh Dispatch, criticism of Riley-Nye tour, 252. 

Pittsburgh Gazette, 338, 387. 

Pixy People, The, 329. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 39, 192. 

Poems Here at Home, 345-6, 391. 

Poet of the Future, The, composition of, 254, 326. 

Poetry and Character, 177. 



424 INDEX 

Pond Lyceum Bureau, 242, 244, 254. 
Poor Man's Wealth, A, 111, 202. 
"Pop" June's Restaurant, 67. 
Prayer Perfect, The, 55. 

Press Club: (Chicago meeting, 1880,) report by Nye, 239-40; 
speech by Riley, 240-1. 

Quarles, Francis, 158. 

Ralston, Samuel M., 404, 406. 

Reach Your Hand to Me, 55. 

Ream, Laura, 67-8. 

Redpath Lyceum Bureau, 183, 188. 

Reed, Enos B., 37. 

Reed, Myron Winslow : 26-7, 39-40, 44, 46, 48, 53-5, 62-3, 67, 86, 98, 
118, 125, 133-4, 145, 151, 167, 175, 179, 204, 263, 275, 280, 
301-5, 342, 375-6 ; death, 377. 

Reedy, William, 377. 

RemarkaUe Man, The, 56, 59, 211, 330. 

Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz GlWb, 34. 

Reveries of a Rhymer, 136. 

Rhymes of Childhood, 136, 208, 280-4, 337, 345, 397. 

Richards, Samuel, 164. 

Ridpath, John Clark, comment on Riley, 333. 

Riley, James Whitcomb : as actor, 1-5; as reader, 5-22; influence 
of Longfellow, 8; influence of Dickens, 8; appearance at 
Monrovia, 9-13; at Anderson, 14; at Kokomo, 19-22; as 
newspaper man, 23-40; as friend, 41-55; at Bloomington, 
. 47 ; on homesickness, 74-5 ; on Robert G. Ingersoll, 78-80 ; on 
the lecture platform, 77-99; on Luther Benson, 79-80; in- 
fluence of Longfellow, 81; Poet Laureate of Indiana, 81; 
on poetry, 81-9 ; debut in Indianapolis, 1879, 89-94 ; at Galva, 
111., 95 ; workshops, 101-117 ; letter to mother, 102 ; letter to 
H. S. Taylor, 108; friendship with Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 
112-115; on sectional prejudice, 122-4; influence of Charles 
A. Dana, 125-30; letter to E. W. Wilcox, 135; letter to 
young writer, 137-8; letter to Mary L. Dodds, 138-9; pen 
names, 141, 143, 146; first book, 159; letter to Robert U. 
Johnson, 166; letter to Joel Chandler Harris, 167; descrip- 
tion by Myron Reed, 167; description by self, 168-9; in- 
fluence of Dickens, 172; letter to George C. Hitt, 178; on 
New England, 181-2; letter to Lewis D. Hayes, 189-90; let- 
ter to Hitt, 189 ; letter to Reed about Matthew Arnold, 193 ; 
letter to Hitt, 202; letter to Browning, 210; letter to Bill 
Nye, 218; characterizations of Lowell, Clemens, Stoddard, 
Eggleston, Howells, Stockton, Cable, Curtis, Warner, Page, 
Collyer, 224 ; toast at W. A. W. dinner, 1888, 229 ; letter to 
Dana, 232 ; Riley-Nye combination, 1886, 234 ; letter to Hitt, 



INDEX 425 

237; second appearance in New York, 242-4; with Nye at 
Macon, Ga., 245; story of soldier, 246; with Nye at Louis- 
ville, 246; at Indianapolis, 1889, 247; at Springfield, pro- 
gram, 250; partnership dissolved, 257; letter to Dan Paine, 
264; decline of power, 273; as business man, 276; financial 
prosperity, 276; criticism in Atlanta Constitution, 279; effect 
of city life, 279; letter to Edward Bok about Rhymes of 
Childhood, 282; habits of eating, 287; letter to Stoddard, 
288 ; letter to Holstein family, 294, 296 ; moves to Lockerbie 
Street, 290; advice to young poets, 300; visit to England, 
1891, 301 ; love of home, 301 ; on English art, 302 ; inspira- 
tion from homely subjects, 302-8; fear of lack of apprecia- 
tion, 309 ; method of production, 315-8 ; influence of William 
Blake, 319 ; influence of night, 319-21 ; belief in inspiration, 
324-8 ; choice of life-work, 330 ; book-building, 337-52 ; letter 
to Madison Cawein, 337; letter to Ras Wilson, 338; letter 
to Dr. W. C. Cooper, 339; letter to William C. Edgar, 339; 
habits of production, 340 ; publications, 345 ; letter to Louise 
C. Moulton, 348 ; in Civil War days, 353-56 ; birthday, 1891, 
357; at Grant celebration, 359-62; toast at ex-President 
Harrison's reception, 362-4; dedication of Soldiers' and 
Sailors' Monument, Indianapolis, 365-7; philosophy, 368; 
histrionic ability, 369-72; death of father (1894), 372; at 
Greenfield in 1896, 372-5 ; story about miner, 373 ; at Denver 
in 1896, 376 ; at Boston in 1897, 377-9 ; at Washington, 1899, 
379 ; program at Chicago, 1900, 380-4 ; at Authors' Readings, 
Indianapolis, 1902, 383; tour of 1903, 385-8; honors, Yale's 
degree, 389-92; University of Pennsylvania, 1904, 392-3; 
Riley and revivalist, 395; religion, 395-6; 1912 greeting to 
school children, 399; gift to Indianapolis of site for Public 
Library, 397; election to American Academy of Arts and 
Letters, 398; state celebration of Riley Day, 398; letter to 
Indianapolis school children, 398; 1913, reception at Music 
Hall, Cincinnati, 402 ; 1913, given keys to Anderson, 400-2 ; 
birthday celebration in 1915, Governor's proclamation and 
program, 403-6 ; death, 411. 

Riley, Margaret, 130. 

Robert Clarke and Company, 161. 

Rochester Chronicle, criticism of Riley and Nye tour, 252. 

Rockville, Indiana, 94. 

Romance of a Waterdury Watch, The, 234. 

Romancin\ 25. 

Rough Diamond, The, 4. 

Rulaiyat of Doc Sifers, The, 345-6. 

Russell, Sol Smith, 13. 

St Botolph Club, 179. 
8t. Louis Mirror, 377. 



426 INDEX 

St. Nicholas Magazine, 118, 136. 

Scribner's Sons Publishing Co., 345, 

Sermon of a Rose, The, 118, 277. 

Shakespeare, William, 333. 

Shower, The, 30, 135. 

Silent Victors, The, 31, 53. 

Sketches in Prose, 214, 345. 

Sleep, 30. 

Sleeping Beauty, A, 32, 116. 

Smith, Wycliffe, 203, 208. 

Soldier, The, 365. 

Soldiers Here To-day, quoted, 357. 

Song I Never Sing, The, 55. 

Song of Yesterday, 136. 

South Wind and the Sun, The, 113. 

Spencer, Indiana, 46. 

Squire Hawkins's Story, 60. 

Stein, Evaleen, 384. 

Stockton, Robert, 215. 

Stoddard, Charles Warren, 287-8. 

Story of a Bad Boy, 280. 

Sulgrove, Berry, 93. 

Sumner, Charles, 376. 

Tale of a Spider, A, 109. 

Tales of the Ocean, 342. 

Tarkington, Booth: 211-12, 229, 331, 370; tribute to Riley, 384, 394. 

Taylor, Howard S., 95. 

Temiple Talks, 179. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 206. 

Terre Haute Courier, 62. 

Terrill, William H., 326. 

Terry, Ellen, 242. 

Tharp's Pond, 319. 

Thomas, Edith M., 165. 

Thompson, Denman, 244. 

Thompson, Maurice : 23, 27 ; criticism of Riley, 278. 

Thompson, Richard W., 56. 

Tile Club, 180. 

To J. W. R. (Kipling) quoted, 284. 

To RoJ)ert Burns, 55. 

Tom Johnson's Quit, 25, 127. 

Tom Sawyer, 280. 

Tom Van Arden, 32, 347. 

Toodles, 3. 

Tradin' Joe, 85-6, 262. 

Travelers' Rest, 154. 

Tree Toad, The, 32, 77. 



INDEX 427 

Tremont Temple, 177. 
Trowbridge, J. T., 146-7. 

Under the Gaslight, 2. 

Van Dyke, Henry, Western spirit, 312-3, 331, 405. 
Van Zile, Edward S., 264. 
Vawter, Will, 340. 
Vinton Block, 103. 
Voorhees, Daniel W., 56. 

W. A. W., 229. 

Wait, 121. 

Walker Poems, 30. 

Walker, John C, 143-4. 

WaUace, Lew, 327, 365, 384. 

Walsh, John, 54. 

Wandering Jew, The, 127, 294. 

Ward, Artemus, 195. 

Washington Post, 379-80. 

Watches of the Night, 347. 

Watterson, Henry : 382 ; on Grant, 362 ; letter to Riley on birthday, 
1915, 409. 

Way We Walk, The, 70. 

Wells, Carolyn, 409. 

Western Association of Writers, dinner, 1888, 228, 229. 

Western Lyceum Agency, 255. 

'Wet Weather Talk, 202. 

When the Frost Is on the Punkin\ 176, 222. 

Where Is Mary Alice Smith, 70. 

White, William Allen, 406. 

Whitlock, Brand, 405. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 389. 

Whittleford Letters, 28-9, 102, 131. 

Wide-Awake, 118, 

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler : 71 ; friendship with Riley, 112-15 ; descrip- 
tion of Riley, 114, 291. 

Willard, Frances, comment on Bereaved, 325-6. 

William McKinley, 357. 

Wilson, Ras, 387. 

Wilson, Robert Burns, 293. 

Wilson, Woodrow, letter to Riley on birthday. 1915, 409. 

Wizard Oil Company, 223. 

Writers' Singing Bee, 229. 



Xenia, Ohio, 48. 
Yankee Blade, 109. 



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